Comment: Merce Cunningham on Broadway

Comment: Merce Cunningham on Broadway Jill Silverman Penny Brogden Historically, Merce Cunningham has worked with the idea of freeing movement - first from its narrative and musical structure and then, most recently in his Events, from the delineations of time. Theoretically , he has attempted to annihilate the notion of dance as "thing" in favor of dance as activity. He has also tried to divest the traditional role assigned to the choreographer and dancers by individualizing the performers and removing all dictatorial procedures usually associated with the act of making dances. Cunningham broke with conventional composition practices by relying heavily on chance operations to determine choreographic structure, undermining the implicitly "thought-out" quality of making movement phrases. By undercutting natural flow he produced jagged transitions between one sequence and the next. This in turn emphasized the "present " aspect in each action, rather than its progression from a "past" to "future" moment. Attention is directed exclusively to the moment at hand as opposed to anticipation of a familiar phrase. Unaccustomed to being performed on a proscenium stage, Cunningham's dances are 93 characterized by non-centralized choreographic patterns. Their lack of specific frontality suggests an atomized rather than a holistic picture. They are made up of disparate, isolated activities performed simultaneously. For the past few years Cunningham has been less interested in repertoire than in the format of numbered Events. In these, complete dances are excerpted and arranged with new sequences. They are then laid out for a particular performance and place. In a program note to such an Event Cunningham writes, "These are presented without intermission , with the possibility of several separate activities happening at the same time to allow for, not so much an evening of dances as the experience of dance." Events are completely visceral, all-encompassing experiences of dancing. They are embellished activity, visually stimulating rhythms and counter-rhythms vying for attention. They represent Cunningham's language reduced to its purest form - unadulterated kinesis. Bits and pieces of familiar works appear and disappear. Viewing is strongly located in a present that is simultaneously pulled along by new movements into a future tense that evaporates in the dance's physical presence . This is a "duration" of dancing on which music or silence superimposes its own time. The length is indefinite, yet the Event comes to a logical end. Merce Cunningham and Dance Company on Broadway proved to be antithetical to the Event concept. Most of what was contradictory, odd, or noteworthy about the Broadway season (Cunningham's first) came from the dialectical differences between Cunningham's theatrical aesthetic, and his theories and dancing as they surface in Events. In such an uptown theatrical setting as the Uris theatre, the repertory program , expansive stage space, and the technically polished young company looked strangely classical. There was nothing except Cunningham 's own presence on the stage to connect the works with their theoretically charged avant-garde past. The company's appearance was couched in contradictions: the static, artifact-like nature of a repertory performance vs. the open format of Cunningham Events; the commercial sell-out gala and beautiful people ambience vs. the casual experiential gestalt usually associated with a Cunningham performance; the projected theatricality of a proscenium space vs. the implicit theatricality embodied in a neutral space galvanized by people dancing; dance as object vs. dancing as activity; work as something preserved within the frame of sets, costumes, props vs. just dancing. Ironically, Cunningham has reached the age and stature where he can relish complexities. He weathers his many-sided existence with impish delight. On the one hand, he is the cult hero of avant-garde dance and the figurehead of all experimentation from Judson through New Dance. As such his innovations and theories are seminal. On the other hand, like his collaborators John Cage, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschen94 berg, Cunningham is accepted in the world of the moneyed, chic, avant-garde followers. In this circle, radical works of art become alchemically joined with bourgeois notions of what's new, fun and very "in." The result is an unlikely marriage of middle-class-chiccommercialism and Art. There were overtones of this relationship in the Broadway run. In some ways the works...