Merce Cunningham Dance Co. Returns after 23 Years

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is coming to Playhouse Square this Saturday for the first time in 23 years, which might require a reintroduction for some of our readers. Cunningham is the last living member of the founders of American modern dance, yet he remains among the most innovative and forward-looking of contemporary choreographers. In presenting this concert, Cleveland Museum of Art's Viva! & Gala Around Town performing arts series is collaborating with DanceCleveland for the first time, an innovation both groups attribute to Cunningham’s unusually close relationship with the visual arts.

We lined up interviews hoping to learn not only about the repertory for the concert, but the precise ins and outs of Cunningham’s chance procedures for composition, the unusual relationship between his dance and music, and why, exactly, MCDC’s relationship with the visual arts is so special (even today Cunningham’s approach to composition and the dance’s unrelated relationship to music – for which he is well known - must be considered eccentric among choreographers).

First we spoke with Robert Swinston who, as Assistant to the Choreographer runs rehearsals, instigates or oversees revivals and stands in for the 80-year old choreographer on stage. Never mind that this is barefoot dancing; those are big shoes to fill.

RS: We open with Fabrications. It’s the only dance in the repertory where we’re not just dressed in unitards; the women are in dresses and the men are in pants and shirts. Like most of our dances, however, Fabrications was made in silence; music, costumes and décor come only at performance time; the piece is created in sections and each section has a certain amount of time – all the dances are checked with a stopwatch.

CC: And these stopwatch intervals, they’re timed to coincide w/ the music?

RS: No, they’re not planned to coincide with the music at all. The only piece we have in the repertory that’s like that is Second Hand, the second piece on the Cleveland program. You may have heard the story about Second Hand. Merce created the solo, originally titled Idyllic Song, in 1944 to the first movement of Socrate by Erik Satie of which John Cage had made a piano reduction. Cage offered to make piano reductions of the remaining two movements, so Cunningham revisited the work in 1969, adding a duet for himself and Carolyn Brown in the second movement and choreographing a group dance for the third movement. Then, two or three weeks before the performance they realized that the Satie estate would not grant permission to use Socrate in any form, so Cage made a piano score using the basic rhythmic structure of the music with a melodic line filled in by chance procedures; Cage named his piece Cheap Imitation and Cunningham titled the dance Second Hand.

CC: We'll actually see the MCDC dancing to music in Second Hand?

RS: You will. In some places it’s with the music beat for beat and in other places there are musical signposts and we have a little flexibility.

CC: Are there musical signposts in other Cunningham dances?

RS: No. When we perform we don’t dance to music because the phrase lengths may be different or the timing itself might be uneven; not all movements are counted, so the timing has a flexibility to it. One of the reasons MC did this was so he wouldn’t be limited by the musical structures; rather, Merce could create his own structures of time and rhythm that were not like the classical compositional styles. At first John and Merce would agree on a time length and a structure for the dance but later they decided to be independent, to agree simply to make a dance and music 20 minutes long. One of their reasons for this was so that one would not be dependent on the other.

Same thing with chance procedures in compositions. Merce could find combinations of movement or juxtapositions of movement that came in a random fashion so that all different kinds of things would happen that would be unexpected. Also, he wouldn’t be limited by the things he likes or doesn’t like. Therefore he would find new possibilities, and the new possibilities weren’t always easy to accomplish, but in the process, something else would be discovered. So that’s basically what they’ve been working on for 40 or 50 years.

CC: What else is on the program?

RS: The third dance in the program is Sounddance and it’s actually my favorite because I’m very fortunate to be able to do Merce's part in it. It’s a startling piece. The movement is explosive and powerful; the music is quite loud, almost apocalyptic. And in the process of the dance it’s almost like there’s a community on stage – in fact most of Merce’s dances create this feeling of community.

CC: [Note: consider taking earplugs to this concert; MCDC has a well-earned reputation for occasionally earsplitting volume levels.] You’ve mentioned the dramatic resonance in Cunningham’s dances, the feeling of community, and that’s a very necessary corrective. There’s a tendency to read about Cunningham’s aesthetic, his chance procedures, and assume that his dances are bloodless abstractions, cerebral exercises, but that’s not the case.

RS: We’re not given any specific narrative, but the power of suggestion is there. As Marcel Duchamp said, "the audience completes the work." Each audience member brings his own imagination to the dance. That’s why Merce’s work is not literal, but figurative, suggestive, and not programmatic. But there are all kinds of different qualities created of sexuality, melancholy.”

CC: What is Cunningham’s special relationship with the visual arts?

RS: The visual arts community kept Merce’s company going in the very lean times. (Most) people didn’t understand what Merce was doing because he wasn’t making narrative dances, they weren’t dancing stories, or they weren’t making specific dramatic situations. The visual arts community came and started to understand what Merce was doing, because the visual arts left narrative and expressionism much earlier than dance. Abstract expressionism became pure abstraction and even pop art; so Merce has been associated w/ Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, he worked with Andy Warhol, many many visual artists. Meanwhile, other dance is still in a mode of expressionism, expressing specific subjects.

The Playhouse Square is the live performance part of this DanceCleveland/CMA collaboration. Also being shown are two movies at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Seeking background information on two Cunningham films being shown at CMA, we spoke with Massoud Saidpour, director of performing arts, music and film at the museum:

CC: Why these two films?

MS: These are two of the most important films made about Cunningham. Both were made out of long collaborations between the directors, Charles Atlas and Elliot Caplan, and Cunningham. They give long retrospectives and of course the Cage / Cunningham film is important because of the influence that both of them had on each other, lifelong partners in life but also artistically.

CC: Why does MCDC have such a special relationship with the visual arts?

MS: I think that Cunningham’s meeting with John Cage must have been a life changing moment for both of these artists in the sense that they began then to broaden the horizon of how dance, music, and art in general could impact the viewer. Cunningham is someone who shifted our paradigms, not only about dance but also about what is an art experience, what is viewing art.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs in concert on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 8PM at the Ohio Theatre in PlayhouseSquare. Tickets are SOLD OUT AS OF PRESS TIME.

Also at the Ohio Theater, a pre-performance talk at 7:15PM and post-performance Q&A with noted dance educator from Chicago’s Columbia College and frequent Merce Cunningham lecturer, Bonnie Brooks.

At Cleveland Museum of Art two films about Merce Cunningham: Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance on Sunday, February 2 at 1:30PM and Cage/Cunningham on Wednesday, February 4 at 7PM in the Cleveland Museum of Art's Lecture Hall. For tickets contact CMA’s Box Office at 800-CMA-0033 or online at http://www.clevelandart.org.

Master classes with MCDC take place at Cleveland State University from 10 – 11:30AM on Thursday, January 29 and 5 – 6:30PM on Friday, January 30. No cost, but advance registration required via email to dance@csuohio.edu.

From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas vicnelsaATearthlink.net
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