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At Work in Merce Cunningham’s Playhouse

Dancers in the Stephen Petronio Company rehearsed Merce Cunningham’s “Signals” at the Dance Theater of Harlem. It will be performed as part of Mr. Petronio’s “Bloodlines” project.Credit...An Rong Xu for The New York Times

The F-word isn’t usually used to describe a dance by Merce Cunningham. But after Rashaun Mitchell watched members of the Stephen Petronio Company rehearse the sextet from “Signals,” a rarely performed Cunningham dance from 1970, he went there.

“This should be much more fun,” said Mr. Mitchell, who, with Melissa Toogood, is restaging the work. Both performed excerpts from “Signals” when they were in the Cunningham company as part of his “Events” — his brilliant and practical way of recycling his work, in which dances were resequenced, generating wholly new programming.

“Listen to each other,” Mr. Mitchell urged the dancers. “See each other more — so much more.”

Mr. Petronio, observing from the side of the studio at Dance Theater of Harlem, nodded in agreement. “When they do look at each other,” he said, “I understand that they’re playing.”

And a sense of play is essential for “Signals,” which was named after the choreographic cues that dancers use to communicate the next series of movements or spacing choices. The score, performed by the ensemble Composers Inside Electronics, will change with each presentation as musicians rotate. Cunningham designed the costumes, sweatsuits bound with tape. And since it’s by Cunningham, it’s hard: His steps are a puzzle of rhythm and form.

But mainly “Signals” is a delight that works as a progression, beginning with the formal starkness of a duet and two solos, and gradually developing into, as Mr. Mitchell described, “a jubilee” with a trio and sextet. The Petronio company, in residence at the Joyce Theater this week, presents “Signals” as part of its “Bloodlines” series, which explores the lineage of American postmodern dance and pays homage to Mr. Petronio’s influences.

Throughout his 70-year career, Cunningham, who died in 2009, pushed the boundaries of modern dance. With his collaborator and partner, the composer John Cage, he was a proponent of dance and music existing independently of each other. His company, as part of a legacy plan, was disbanded after his death; now his work is licensed to dance companies and educational institutions through the Merce Cunningham Trust.

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Melissa Toogood, center, a former dancer in the Merce Cunningham troupe, is restaging “Signals” with Rashaun Mitchell, another former Cunningham dancer.Credit...An Rong Xu for The New York Times

Last performed by the Cunningham company in 1988 (and last performed in 2005), “Signals” has been licensed to only three companies apart from Mr. Petronio’s. His group has performed a Cunningham work already — “RainForest” (1968), featuring Andy Warhol’s Mylar pillows filled with helium — but Mr. Petronio wanted a second. Patricia Lent, the director of licensing at the Merce Cunningham Trust, steered him toward “Signals” for its modular structure, playful quality and challenging solos. Its absence from the stage was another draw, as was the fact that Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Toogood knew it well.

“I fell in love with it,” Mr. Petronio said. “It’s like a choreographer in the studio investigating his work — just on that simple level — and that really turned me on. And I think it’s hysterical. I love the humor in it.”

“Signals” dips into Cunningham’s slapstick side. “It’s the kind of jokes that the greatest choreographer on earth can make with the body,” Mr. Petronio said. “They’re not for everybody, but they’re certainly for us who love movement.”

Like other Cunningham dances from its period, “Signals” was created with the idea that its sections and roster of dancers could be flexible. (One section, for instance, is called “Trio for 3 or 4.”) Its modular structure made it easy for Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Toogood to split up staging duties: She taught the female solo, the duet and the trio, while he focused on the male solo and the sextet. Since both solos, as Ms. Toogood put it, are of the “meat-and-potato” variety, they taught them to all of the dancers as training material.

For Bria Bacon, a recent addition to the company who calls Mr. Petronio’s choreography “a perfect blend of release and strength and technique,” mastering a Cunningham solo has been a challenge. “I feel like now that it’s in my body and I no longer have to think about the steps,” she said, “I’m constantly trying to find these textures, whether it’s rhythmic, whether it’s intention for my focus or deciding to take my angle sharper in space.” And, she added, “that’s really fun.”

In staging this part, Ms. Toogood could draw on personal experience. Before she joined Cunningham’s main company, she worked closely with him as a member of the Repertory Understudy Group, which focused intensely on this solo. Cunningham’s main concern, she said, had to do with movement extremes.

“He really slowed down the promenade,” she said, referring to when a dancer turns in place. “As soon as I figured it out, he would try and destabilize me a little bit to have to explore something else.”

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Mr. Mitchell, center, working with the Petronio company. Behind him (wearing glasses) is Stephen Petronio.Credit...An Rong Xu for The New York Times

He was also playing with acceleration and deceleration. “So rather than having something just change from one time into the other, it was like within the moment he would change your timing,” Ms. Toogood said. “There are parts like that within the solo that are really sophisticated.”

As for the signals: They’re not always obvious, but they’re there. In one moment, a dancer makes a sharp, repeating sound; in another, dancers hold up numbers with their fingers to indicate their place in a line. “It keeps it fresh and alive,” Mr. Petronio said.

As a choreographer, Mr. Petronio likened the experience of watching rehearsals to having a conversation with Cunningham. “It’s always been about me and my work and my artists and my dancers and my this and my that, and I never really thought I would be able to share the space,” he said.

But “Bloodlines” has changed that: “You learn something very different from work at different points in your life, and I’m very lucky to be able to do that. It’s been the emotional surprise of my life.”

Now in its fourth season, “Bloodlines” — which has included works by Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton — was supposed to last only five years. But Mr. Petronio has already made the decision to continue. His next Cunningham piece will be “Tread,” another work from 1970 known for its humor. That will give the dancers more chances to tap into Cunningham’s notion of play. As Mr. Mitchell pointed out, such opportunities are rare.

When they’re available, though, you should take them, he said, “because the work is pretty austere.”

“For people that are new to it, there’s a tendency to go into a really serious and robotic place,” he added. “I don’t think that that’s what Merce really wanted. He wanted the humanity, and in a certain way he wanted the drama.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: At Work in Merce Cunningham’s Playhouse. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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