Robert Ellis Dunn collection

Robert Ellis Dunn was born in Oklahoma in 1928. His original training was in music including studying theory and composition at the New England Conservatory in Boston. This was followed by studies in dance at Boston Conservatory of Music from 1955 through 1958, while concurrently teaching dance for percussionists at that institution.

He relocated to New York in 1958 and began to work as a piano accompanist for major modern dance choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and José Limon. During this time, he studied music theory with John Cage, which proved highly influential to Dunn. While in New York, he also taught nontraditional classes in dance improvisation and choreography at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. Dunn's classes are credited with initiating the rise of the Judson Dance Theater collective (1962-1964), as well as the Postmodernist movement in dance.

From 1965 through 1972, he served as the first Assistant Curator of the Dance Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Dunn also taught dance at Teachers College of Columbia University. In fall 1986, Dunn was appointed Associate Professor (with tenure) as a member of the faculty of the Department of Dance at the University of Maryland.

Dunn received numerous awards and honors including a "Bessie" New York Dance and Performance Award in 1985, the American Dance Guild Award in 1988, and in 1993 a scholarship was named after him at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Late in his career, he explored videodance, resulting in the collaboration with Matthew Chernov—"DanceFindings: Robert Ellis Dunn Videodance Installation"—posthumously exhibited in 1997 at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dunn died on July 5, 1996 at his home in New Carrollton, Maryland.