First performed in 1981, the postmodern solo dance performance was based on Cummings’s childhood memories of being in the kitchen with her grandmothers. Accompanied by a soundtrack of music by Meredith Monk, Collin Walcott, and Brian Eno, as well as a soup recipe read aloud, Cummings dances with a cast iron skillet, scrubs the floors, and sits in a kitchen chair, quite literally reenacting her memories and everyday movements, with eye-catching, convulsive, and abstract choreography.
Because of how Cummings resonated with her audience through dance, Chicken Soup grew in recognition and became her most famous performance. The dance aired on PBS’s “Alive from Off Center,” a television series dedicated to screening dance and performance art. Watching Cummings’s reenactment of domestic life, people around the nation, especially women, were plunged into their own memories and experiences of caregiving.
Cummings shared intimate moments of home life through dance hoping to show people that the movements she portrayed—especially in Chicken Soup—were both unique and universal. Through a mixture of realist and abstract movements, the themes explored in her body of work exemplified reality and strengthened a sense of community in those who experienced it. In 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts declared Chicken Soup an American masterpiece. Thankfully for modern audiences, Cummings made it a point to record her work. Today, these recordings and the digitization and exhibition of Cummings’s oeuvre continues to unite people in a unique, and intimate, way.
Blondell Cummings: Art as Moving Pictures was on view at Art+Practice through February 22, 2022.
