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Those who stayed the course gave the piece a warm, but not ecstatic reception. It's certainly an ambitious work. There are only 14 dancers, and they're rarely on stage together: what gives the piece its sense of scale is the music - or the soundtrack, perhaps - Andrew Culver's score performed by 150 musicians placed round the topmost ring of the Roundhouse, and an electronic score by David Tudor overlaid. We are surrounded by and immersed in sound, and for me it was this, rather than the choreography, which gave the piece its unique flavour. What happens on stage, by contrast, appears less extraordinary. Making dance-in-the-round work satisfactorily is a huge technical challenge which Cunningham brilliantly overcomes: for the first few minutes I was constantly finding things to admire in the ways he uses the dancers. Quite soon, though, I found I was taking that for granted, and moved on to thinking instead about the different perspectives others in the audience must be getting. It's easy to get absorbed in something happening in 'your' bit of the stage, and then to realise that people on the other side must be seeing it over or through other groupings, giving it quite a different emphasis and importance. Only you are seeing it quite like this.
 

And after that stage, then what? There are the dancers to admire: their control and strength are phenomenal, they look wonderful in the costumes - mostly in shades of blue, but also flame-coloured during one section - and some of what they are given to do is strikingly beautiful. A duet given an extra dimension by another woman sitting watching, a moment where all the men link hands, a woman lifted by a trio of men ... and all done so calmly that you almost forget how difficult it must be, and how constantly they must all be counting. The under-the-sea feeling comes and goes, and if you want to you can attach 'meaning' to what's happening - or you can sit and just let it happen. Ninety minutes is a long time, though, and I found that before the end I'd run out of things to think about and was getting - not bored, but impatient; and longing, as so often at a Cunningham performance, for the dancers to be allowed to reveal themselves as people. Ocean is lovely to look at and hugely accomplished but for me it has no heart: and that keeps it at the level of an artifact to admire rather than an overwhelming artistic experience.