{"id":6414,"date":"2019-07-07T20:09:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T00:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6414"},"modified":"2019-07-15T09:43:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T13:43:08","slug":"cunningham-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/07\/cunningham-abroad\/","title":{"rendered":"Cunningham Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Compagnie CNDC-Angers\/Robert Swinston visits Jacob’s Pillow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Carlo Schiavo of Compagnie CNDC-Angers\/Robert Swinston in Merce Cunningham’s Suite for Five. <\/em>Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time, Merce\nCunningham wrote about the dancing that mattered to him: \u201c[y]ou do not separate\nthe human being from the actions he does, or the actions that surround him, but\nyou can see what it is like to break those actions up in different ways, to\nallow the passion, and it is passion, to appear for each person in his own\nway.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t think of this at\nJacob\u2019s Pillow while<\/em> watching Carlo\nSchiavo of Compagnie CNDC-Angers\/Robert Swinston as he, alone onstage, began\nCunningham\u2019s Suite for Five<\/em> (1953-1958).\nBut I did take in Schiavo\u2019s alertness to the space around him and the ways in\nwhich he could move from slowness into a sudden burst of speed into a\nremarkably steady balance on one leg. I could clearly see what he was doing,\nbut I wasn\u2019t moved to ponder why he was doing it. That is, I saw passion, but\nunderstood that he was not responding to a crisis in his onstage life, nor was\nhe was dancing to show off his fine technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham, abetted by his\ncolleague and partner, John Cage, employed a variety of compositional\nprocedures in order to knock his choreography into patterns as unpredictable as\nthose we experience daily. His book Changes:\nNotes on Choreography <\/em>is full of risky strategies, such as throwing dice or\ncoins onto a chart of possible moves. The three Cunningham pieces that\nCNDC-Angers brought from France to Jacob\u2019s Pillow this summer\u2014 Suite for Five<\/em>, Inlets 2 <\/em>(1983), and How to\nPass, Kick, Fall, and Run <\/em>(1965)\u2014require no more than eight dancers, and\neven so, intense awareness of one another is a given. Especially since the\nscores by Cage that accompany them don\u2019t provide a beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swinston has been involved with Cunningham\u2019s work, ever since (or even before) he joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1980, and he has conveyed to the French company the rigor and the daring that the pieces demand. The dancers meet the challenge superbly. History may have buoyed them up (in 1971, Swinston was a scholarship student at\u00a0 Jacob\u2019s Pillow). Director Pamela Tatge\u2019s introduction and a series of film clips establish Cunningham\u2019s company there: his Banjo <\/em>in 1953, his Sounddance<\/em> in 1975 and many pieces between and after these. In 2009, when he was unable to travel, Pillow performances were live-streamed to him; he died not long afterward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Merce Cunningham’s Suite for Five. <\/em>Foreground: Gianni Joseph. At back, L to R: Claire Seigle-Goujon and Anna Chirescu. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

None of these three Cunningham works can be easy to perform. In Suite for Five<\/em>\u2019s short sections, separated by blackouts, you may see any one of the dancers (Anna Chirescu, Gianni Joseph, Catarina Pern\u00e3o, Claire Seigle-Goujon, and Schiavo) slowly rotate on one leg, holding the other high, like a weathervane in a gentle wind. It\u2019s especially memorable in a solo by Pern\u00e3o. All the dancers in Suite for Five <\/em>are given to bounding into the air. Also to lunging deeply. And, as in all the works on the program, one person may fall into unison with another as if by accident. As the dance progresses, you may focus, say, on the deliberate slide of one person\u2019s foot against the floor. Or be startled by the moment in which Joseph leans on a slant braced by his grip on Seigle-Goujon and Chirescu, who hold each other\u2019s hands. At another moment, backing up on his knees, Joseph gives the floor on either side of him a little slap with his braced hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dancers are not alone in\ndrawing our eyes. In front of the stage, on a level with the first row of\naudience members, Adam Tendler hovers over a piano, not only striking its keys\nto play Cage\u2019s Music for Piano 4-19<\/em>,\nbut reaching into it to pluck or strike its strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who, by the way, designed the costumes of Suite for Five <\/em>(and doubtless dyed the originals)?  Robert Rauschenberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Merce Cunningham’s Inlets 2<\/em>. L to R: Flora Rogeboz, Claire Seigle-Goujon, and Anna Chirescu. Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham choreographed Inlets <\/em>in 1977 and Inlets 2 <\/em>in 1983. His company first performed the latter in France.\nIt has seven dancers instead of the original six, but also, as the program\nexplains, \u201cThe same gamut of sixty-four movements was subjected again to other\nchance operations.\u201d  In other words, the\norder of them changed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of the work brings\nto mind the fact that Cunningham grew up Centralia, Washington. The Pacific\nOcean was about thirty miles to the west, and from Seattle the inlets of Puget\nSound reached southward like fingers. Cage\u2019s score, Inlets<\/em> (1977) sounds like water. Is water. Near the piano, sits a\ntable holding two full pitchers, several huge conch shells, and a variety of\nsmaller ones. Tendler, Laura Kuhn (executive director of the John Cage\nTrust), and, at the performance I saw, Swinston, pour water into the shells and\ntilt or shake them close to microphones. You hear lapping, sloshing,\nbubbling\u2014sometimes in deep tones, sometimes in shallower ones.  Once, at the end, Tendler blows a piercing\nnote on a small shell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women (those named plus Flora Rogeboz) wear long-sleeved dresses with short swirling skirts in shades of blue and bronze and gray. The men (plus Pierre Guilbault) wear tights and leotards in similar colors. Mark Lancaster, who designed the beautiful lighting as well as the costumes, set them against a deep blue sky or a violet one. I think of sea birds, as well as tides, as I watch the dancers flock and separate, move swiftly or stay motionless. When they stroke one hand down their other arm, I think of birds. When they jump, they fly. Occasionally two or more move in unison, but that quickly dissolves. And, like birds, they don\u2019t touch one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matthieu Chayrigues (L) and Anna Chirescu of Compagnie CNDC-Angers\/Robert Swinston in Merce Cunningham’s How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run. <\/em>Photo: Grace Kathryn Landesfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How to Pass,\nKick, Fall, and Run <\/em>is as sporty as its title. The eight performers (those\nmentioned plus Matthieu Chayrigues) wear black tights, bright-colored shirts,\nand ankle warmers. Beverly Emmons\u2019s lighting is bright, and the wooden back\nwall of the stage is exposed. Kuhn and Tendler sit onstage left at a small\ntable, with access to a bottle of champagne, two glasses, microphones, scripts,\nand timers. Throughout the piece, they read various of the short witty stories\nfrom Cage\u2019s 1958 lecture \u201cIndeterminacy\u201d (included in his 1961 book Silence<\/em>). Each story must be read in one\nminute; this means that the reader may sometimes have to speak slowly and pause\noften, and at other times to fairly gabble. I like the way your attention veers\nbetween the \u201cplayers\u201d and the unstopping (and unrelated) talk of the\n\u201creferees,\u201d although this time, I\u2019m not sure why, Kuhn and Tendler spoke\nsimultaneously more often than I remember from previous performances. That was\ndisappointing; the tales are too delicious to miss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work is like a game whose rules are invisible, distorted or non-existent. For instance, Joseph (as I recall) travels sideways, packed between two women, and, as they go, turns now one, now the other to face a different direction. This undertaking happens quickly, but it doesn\u2019t lead to, or accomplish, anything beyond the doing of it.  Three men lift Pern\u00e3o and just as swiftly put her down again. A dancer\u2019s slow unfolding of one leg and then another can seem more like a love note to nobody than an ordeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many sports, this piece is strenuous. The players run, leap, jump, drop to the ground, and assist one another, but there\u2019s no sense of competition, only of strenuous, buoyant, enjoyable activity that seems to have a pattern whether or not we discern it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Merce Cunningham’s How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run. <\/em>L to R: Carlo Schiavo, Matthieu Chayrigues, Gianni Joseph, Flora Rogeboz, Claire Seigle-Goujon, and Pierre Guilbault. Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham was interested in technological developments, and watching a television monitor in the Norton Owen Reading Room or exhibited in the lobby of the Doris Duke Theater, you can see \u201cVirtual Reality,\u201d a startling display of the process developed by Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar known as \u201cmotion capture.\u201d Joined by Marc Downie, they approached Cunningham\u2019s solo Loops<\/em>, which, late in his life, he performed only with his hands. To those hands, they attached 48 \u201csmall reflective markers\u201d and photographed his movements from all directions with infrared cameras. In a maneuver I don\u2019t fully understand, they then \u201cdevised algorithmic ways of interconnecting hands in both natural and cat\u2019s cradle formations, as well as in several others.\u201d What you see in the new version, Loops VR<\/em>, is the interplay of curling and flowing, intersecting and flashing lines of colored light. Merce\u2019s dancing hands transfigured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the lobby of the Ted Shawn Theater, you can also see an exhibit of Paul Taylor\u2019s small art works and, in Blake\u2019s Barn, a larger display of photographs and artifacts titled \u201cDance We Must: Another Look.\u201d Curated by Owen and Associate Archivist Patsy Gay, it focuses on Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s founder, Ted Shawn, his onetime wife and partner Ruth St. Denis, and their work in the 1920s and earlier. Here is the costume she wore for one of her Indian \u201cnautch\u201d dances. Here is the bejeweled \u201ctraje de luces\u201d jacket he bought from a matador in Spain. Here are programs, photographs, travelling trunks, and on the wall, the immense faux-bronze image of Shiva Nataraja, poised on one foot, a lotus beneath him and an arch bearing tiny, spaced-out flames surrounding him. Look closely, and you can see how the arch comes apart and the whole thing can be fitted into the box below it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth St. Denis in one of her Indian dances, invisible wires flaring her skirt.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On\nthe walls, statements from choreographers, dramaturges, and scholars (Dr. Hari\nKrishnan, Lionel Popkin, Rajika Puri, Paul A. Scolari, and Gaven D. Trinidad\namong others) praise, criticize, and set in perspective the issue of orientalism\nas it developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Were the\ncountries of the East always pleased when Westerners admired and respected\ntheir cultures? Or were they appalled by the lenses through which they were\nviewed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surrounded\nby all this, I forgot an important fact: Merce Cunningham would have turned 100\nthis year, and he is being celebrated by dance companies worldwide. If he were\nhere, what would I say?  \u201cHappy\nBirthday,\u201d I guess.  And yes, oh yes:\n\u201cthank you for the dances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Compagnie CNDC-Angers\/Robert Swinston visits Jacob’s Pillow Once upon a time, Merce Cunningham wrote about the dancing that mattered to him: \u201c[y]ou do not separate the human being from the actions he does, or the actions that surround him, but you can see what it is like to break those actions up in different ways, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[1],"tags":[116,1656],"class_list":{"0":"post-6414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-jacobs-pillow","8":"tag-jacobs-pillow-dance-festival","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414","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=6414"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6442,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions\/6442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}