{"id":393,"date":"2011-12-11T18:40:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-11T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=393"},"modified":"2011-12-12T08:45:35","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T13:45:35","slug":"walking-with-merce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/12\/walking-with-merce\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking With Merce"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Roaratorio<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

So long, Roaratorio<\/em>. Goodbye, Biped<\/em>. Farewell, Second Hand<\/em>. And Pond Way<\/em>, Split Sides<\/em>, Rainforest<\/em>, it\u2019s been great to know you. Pardon the tears. New Yorkers may see scraps from these works in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company\u2019s Events at the Park Avenue Armory on the last days of 2011. Then silence and stillness. Or, as Cunningham\u2019s longtime collaborator, composer John Cage, might remind us, a silence filled with the sounds of life going on and a stillness fraught with beautiful remembered motion.<\/p>\n

As the two-year MCDC Legacy Tour that followed Cunningham\u2019s death in 2009 winds down and the company ends its nearly 60-year existence, the dancers are performing with a quiet intensity that makes every moment luminous. In the three works that I saw during MCDC\u2019s all-too-brief December season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, company members brought to life Cunningham\u2019s words about neither over-performing nor under-performing; in his eyes, \u201cjust do the movement\u201d was a challenge to find fullness and proportion at each instant and to be alert to small shifts in the wind of the choreography.<\/p>\n

Years ago, the critic Clive Barnes ventured the notion that without costumes and d\u00e9cor, all Cunningham dances would look alike. History has not allowed him to get away with that. It is true that there is a distinctive look about Cunningham\u2019s movement. The dancers\u2019 default posture is erect; when they bend or tilt or twist, they appear to do so by choice and not because inner agony or outer forces have them in thrall. They stretch their limbs and point their toes as adeptly as ballet dancers, but without the exalted manner and attention-getting preparations that often cloak steps in the classical lexicon. In contrast to many other styles of modern and postmodern dance, Cunningham dancing challenges the performers to step out quickly and intricately and to hold long, serene balances on one leg.<\/p>\n

However, each work configures and alters the basic Cunningham look by means of choreographic choices and chance operations. The pacing alters; the texture becomes denser or more austere; the contacts between dancers assume varying degrees of complexity. The atmosphere may seem subtly sunny, playful, businesslike, sad, edged with danger; it\u2019s up to us to assign \u201cmeanings\u201d if we so wish.<\/p>\n

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Roaratorio<\/em>, Silas Riener and Jamie Scott, foreground. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Roaratorio<\/em> (1983) is a friendly piece. When not busy, the dancers perch on or near bar stools, arranging them now and then to get a better view of the comings and goings. They wear bright-colored practice clothes and frequently appear with additional apparel, as if they\u2019d just grabbed a tee shirt or a leg warmer from a backstage basket. Cage\u2019s magnificent tape collage Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake<\/em> swarms with life. In it, the River Liffey runs, waves break, dogs bark, babies cry, car horns blow, cocks crow, sheep bleat, church bells ring. Cage\u2019s quiet voice (tinged with an Irish accent for the occasion) reads almost undecipherably from James Joyce\u2019s masterwork, and scraps of tunes by pipes, fiddle, flute, bodhran, and a nasal-voiced folk singer further complicate the texture. Speakers placed around the theater embed us in this compendium of Irish-village sounds.<\/p>\n

The dancing is lusty from the get-go. Cunningham uses no familiar Irish steps, but at times creates his own images of folk dancing. Dylan Crossman begins by showing us just how spraddle-legged, flex-footed, fast, springy, and vivacious it can get. The dancers don\u2019t maintain an upright stance, but tilt from side to side or hunch over with the thrust of their feet. Jennifer Goggans tries out her version; so does Emma Desjardins. Rashaun Mitchell and Jamie Scott join. Krista Nelson dances by herself in this usually convivial place. Robert Swinston has an audience when he soloes. Then the couple-dancing starts, groups embark on mutually agreed-upon steps, form hand-in-hand chains, or bound in a circle. The vibrant Melissa Toogood, happy to be a part of this, teams up with some of the men for a brief, folksy fling. Brandon Collwes introduces a new step; it\u2019s he who several times hoists Nelson and Andrea Weber out of the splits they keep sinking into. Daniel Madoff makes his feet stitch rapidly, while the others cluster and move slowly in their own individual ways. There are jokes. At one point (by now Silas Riener and John Hinrichs have arrived; later comes Marcie Munnerlyn) partners face each other and, holding hands, attempt a fast, tricky, low-kicking dance that nobody appears to know very well but which all of them doggedly carry on with anyway.<\/p>\n

While Roaratorio<\/em> leaves you grinning and thinking about skipping into the BAM lobby, Second Hand<\/em> breaks your heart. When the latter premiered at BAM in 1970, it was explained that Cunningham\u2014who usually treats musical scores as a parallel event to choreography rather than a supporting one\u2014had expected to perform the piece to Erik Satie\u2019s \u201csymphonic drama\u201d Socrate<\/em> in Cage\u2019s two-piano reduction of the score. When Satie\u2019s estate denied the requisite permission, Cage quickly composed a new piano piece based on Satie\u2019s structure and rhythms and called it Cheap Imitation<\/em>. In response, Cunningham came up with the title of Second Hand. What the 1970 program did not mention was that the opening solo performed by the choreographer was a reconstruction of his 1944 Idyllic Song<\/em>, which had been set to Cage\u2019s two-piano reduction of the first part of Socrate<\/em> (so in 1970, that too was secondhand, but in a different sense from Cage\u2019s second authorial hand on the music). Nor did any program notes allude to the music\u2019s three sections: \u201cPortrait of Socrates,\u201d \u201cOn the Banks of the Ilissus,\u201d and \u201cThe Death of Socrates.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Second Hand<\/em>, with Robert Swinston (far left) in Cunningham's role. Photo: Stephanie Berger<\/p><\/div>\n

Not for Cunningham the close dramatic (if abstracted) links made decades later by Mark Morris in his beautiful Socrate<\/em>, set to Satie\u2019s version for piano and sung text of translations from three of Plato\u2019s Dialogues. Yet the exquisitely spare earlier dance is rich with implications. Who knows exactly why Cunningham chose to return to Satie\u2019s score in 1969, the year he turned 50? Does it speak of the isolation of the artist from his disciples by virtue of the increasing age gap between him and them\u2014a kind of death of the old company life? Whatever you make of Second Hand<\/em>, it is elusively but ineffably tinged with sadness. And to perform it now\u2014to watch it now\u2014 is akin to mourning.<\/p>\n

In the opening solo, Robert Swinston never moves from a spot downstage center that is isolated from the surrounding darkness by Richard Nelson\u2019s lighting. The single notes in Cage\u2019s music, played by David Behrman, fall into pauses. The dancer is intent on his arms and what can be touched by a straight one reaching out and a curved one gathering in air. He treads in place, thrusts his hips from side to side or rocks from one foot to the other. A couple of times, he turns his head as if expecting someone to join him, but he retreats to the back of the stage when Andrea Weber arrives and watches her intently, occasionally making large, generous gestures in her direction. The text of Satie\u2019s \u201cOn the Banks of the Ilissus\u201d refers to a dialogue between Socrates and the younger Phaedrus. They discuss the nature of friendship and rest on the grass. Weber is dancing the role made for Carolyn Brown, who was, in 1970, the only remaining member of Cunningham\u2019s original company\u2014not only his most incandescent dancer, but one with an in-depth understanding of his work.<\/p>\n

Weber is extraordinary in this part\u2014strong, serene, owning the space even as she explores it. When she crosses the space with delicate little bounding hitch-kicks, her legs trailing behind her, she brings sunlight with her. She seems hardly to notice Swinston before she dances close to him and puts her hands on his shoulders. When they move together, they affirm something they both know, but he sits on the floor to watch while she jumps, as if lost in admiration for this marvelous colleague. In the end, they run circles around the stage, their arms around each other\u2019s waists; at the end of the second circle, Weber just keeps going and disappears into the wings.<\/p>\n

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Andrea Weber aloft, with (left to right) Toogood, Riener, Mitchell, Madoff, and Collwes. Photo: Stephanie Berger<\/p><\/div>\n

Gradually, unhurriedly, the other eight dancers enter with big, slow, smooth strides. Each wears a unitard of a different color. As your eyes graze the space, they encounter pockets of stillness that weave in and out of the silences in the music. Some people wait or pose while others gesture (Nelson spends a very long time with one leg in the air). Occasionally they lean on one another, or collaborate on an action, such as laying Weber gently down. In a hardly discernible fashion, they seem to trace a circle. Swinston may join them, and just before they leave, singly or in twos, they all face him. He\u2019s left alone at the back of the stage, slowly lifting his arms and opening them.<\/p>\n

The dancers\u2019 exit seems like a leave-taking, and this is the section of Satie\u2019s scenario in which Socrates\u2019 friends come to say farewell and watch him drink the hemlock. Cunningham and some of his exegetes may deny that his subject was ever anything more than movement in time and space, but I doubt that. In Brown\u2019s splendid book, Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham<\/em>, she writes that in the final stage rehearsal before the premiere of Second Hand<\/em>, she\u2019d been alarmed by the anguished expression on Cunningham\u2019s face when they ran in the circles that ended their duet. She thought he might be exhausted or injured. The next day, Cage told her not to worry, \u201cMerce said it\u2019s at that moment that [Socrates] is preparing to meet death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jasper Johns designed the costumes for Second Hand<\/em>, dyeing the unitards so that one sleeve or leg of each shaded toward the nearest hue worn by someone else. That\u2019s imperfectly rendered in the current costumes, but, still, when the performers line up for their curtain call, together they make a rainbow.<\/p>\n

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Biped<\/em>'s Dancers, Real and Virtual. Photo: Stephanie Berger<\/p><\/div>\n

When Program B jumps from 1970 to 1999 and Biped<\/em>, everyone is a rainbow. Suzanne Gallo\u2019s body suits of various lengths shimmer like multi-colored moir\u00e9 in Aaron Copp\u2019s lighting, and the texture\u2014both visual and aural\u2014is dense and seductive. The year of Biped<\/em>\u2019s premiere, Cunningham turned 80 and ventured into new technological territory: motion capture. The d\u00e9cor by Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser sometimes sets luminous virtual sticks tumbling above and around the live performers. Horizontal bars of light slide down as a fragmentary, occasional fence. Alignments of small white phantom balls that look like super-nimble dancers tumble by, while occasionally a ghostly one\u2014immense or tiny\u2014 made of elegant chalk drawings imitates the steps you\u2019ve seen executed by 12 flesh-and-blood dancers (Munnerlyn may be nursing an injury; she didn\u2019t appear as scheduled in Second Hand<\/em> or Biped<\/em>). Meanwhile Copp alters the white-to-blue ratio of large light rectangles on the floor. Dancers appear out of the blackness at the rear of the stage and are engulfed by it again, as suddenly as the virtual images come to life.<\/p>\n

Gavin Byars\u2019 score for synthesizer, double bass, cello, violin, electric guitar, and percussion creates a strangely, fugitively romantic ambiance in which these shining creatures meet and mingle, dart like fish through dark waters, and disappear. Here the men spin; here five women move in slow harmony. Soloists swim into focus. Mitchell and Scott meet in a duet. And all the time Eshkar and Kaiser\u2019s drifting world, visible to us and ignored by these gorgeous human bipeds, destabilizes their<\/em> world\u2014haunting them.<\/p>\n

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Dancing with Ghosts, Awaiting the End. Photo: Stephanie Berger<\/p><\/div>\n

Speaking of virtual dancers, my computer uses some unfathomable chance procedure to deliver a different Imogen Cunningham photo to my screen every time I boot up. Usually it chooses Martha Graham. Yesterday, when I began writing this piece, the image was of Merce when he was a dancer in her company. He\u2019s squatting, and only his knit-covered knees, his bent arms, and his pressed-together palms appear in the frame. He looks as if he\u2019s about to launch himself into something\u2014maybe a jump, maybe a career.<\/p>\n

Cunningham\u2019s inventiveness never flagged. He fed on risk. He was still discovering things about dancing and its theater when death brought him up short. Talk about haunting! Let\u2019s hope that his adventurous spirit does just that to choreographers yet unborn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So long, Roaratorio. Goodbye, Biped. Farewell, Second Hand. And Pond Way, Split Sides, Rainforest, it\u2019s been great to know you. Pardon the tears. New Yorkers may see scraps from these works in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company\u2019s Events at the Park Avenue Armory on the last days of 2011. Then silence and stillness. Or, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[226,225,228,224,227],"class_list":{"0":"post-393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-andrea-weber","9":"tag-carolyn-brown","10":"tag-erik-satie","11":"tag-john-cage","12":"tag-second-hand","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}