In seeing the Merce Cunningham Company last night, there were so many things that were striking about the performance and the concept of performance itself. It almost seemed like the dancers and musicians didn’t belong in a performing arts center but some other space I couldn’t define. Perhaps outside. Or in an architectural setting not unlike what I imagine the Cistern Chapel to be like where the music for the first piece was recorded: and enormous and abandoned underground 2 million gallon water tank. Wow. Now, that’s some looping.
There was an introspective quality to the work that I had not seen before in dance. I love dance, and have seen lots of dance concerts. I am usually struck by the athleticism and beauty of the movement, and perhaps drawn in by the meaning or story in the dance. Merce’s work was wholly different. He did not seem to have an agenda. I didn’t feel that he was expressing anything specific, outside of what the audience interpreted in the strangely graceful, jolting, fragile, strong, vulnerable and powerful movement that wended its way across the stage in a mesmerizing meditative event. It was the first concert I’d ever seen where the elements of the dance that were separate physically in the space did not compete for attention. I wasn’t asking myself ‘where should I look? I don’t want to miss anything’ or ‘how do these pieces fit together?’ I felt the permission to experience the dance in any way I chose. If a movement, gesture or contact between dancers caught my attention I followed it, and then that would lead me to another dancer, arm, hand, touch, face, jump that I was drawn into.
The seamless integration of recorded music and live musicians was unreal. I have been challenged by that myself in my own work, and seeing the technical mastery of it was inspiring. The players used conch shells blown from the mezzanine as well as shell music blown into the strings of a piano. They used ballet slippers as percussion, and a sound board and computer for who knows what all. Speaks were set up in the mezzanine and sound was coming from everywhere. The presence of the musicians in the pit and mezzanine asked the questions: ‘What is a dancer? What is dance? What is choreography? Where does the dance end and audience begin?’
There was an introspective quality to the work that I had not seen before in dance. I love dance, and have seen lots of dance concerts. I am usually struck by the athleticism and beauty of the movement, and perhaps drawn in by the meaning or story in the dance. Merce’s work was wholly different. He did not seem to have an agenda. I didn’t feel that he was expressing anything specific, outside of what the audience interpreted in the strangely graceful, jolting, fragile, strong, vulnerable and powerful movement that wended its way across the stage in a mesmerizing meditative event. It was the first concert I’d ever seen where the elements of the dance that were separate physically in the space did not compete for attention. I wasn’t asking myself ‘where should I look? I don’t want to miss anything’ or ‘how do these pieces fit together?’ I felt the permission to experience the dance in any way I chose. If a movement, gesture or contact between dancers caught my attention I followed it, and then that would lead me to another dancer, arm, hand, touch, face, jump that I was drawn into.
The seamless integration of recorded music and live musicians was unreal. I have been challenged by that myself in my own work, and seeing the technical mastery of it was inspiring. The players used conch shells blown from the mezzanine as well as shell music blown into the strings of a piano. They used ballet slippers as percussion, and a sound board and computer for who knows what all. Speaks were set up in the mezzanine and sound was coming from everywhere. The presence of the musicians in the pit and mezzanine asked the questions: ‘What is a dancer? What is dance? What is choreography? Where does the dance end and audience begin?’
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