[2] Dunn’s students included musicians, visual artists, and dancers such as Simone Forti, David Gordon, Steve Paxton, Meredith Monk, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown.
Dunn also served as an assistant curator at the Research Dance Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center from 1965 to 1972.
Dunn also became interested in dance for camera, or “videodance,” in which an installation was created with Matthew Chernov and premiered at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee on January 30, 1997, a few months after his death.
[1] Dunn appreciated John Cage’s non-judgmental approach to teaching, and analyzed structure, form, method, and materials over praise or criticism of a work.
[2] Dunn’s experiments with music, movement, and surrounding elements greatly influenced many post-modern dancers including Steve Paxton, father of contact improvisation.
Later in life, Dunn became interested in “videodance”, which he felt exposed dance to those who did not seek it out, and gave the choreographer the ability to draw attention to certain details of a piece.
[4] While Dunn had distinct ideas regarding composition, he did not wish to define or codify a style of movement, and insisted on his work always being seen as an evolving process rather than a proven theory.