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Merce CunninghamDance Company May 2008 New York, Dia:Beacon by Rachel Straus |
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Of late Merce Cunningham, age 89, wants viewers to experience his dancers up close and personal. This September he begins “Mondays with Merce,” a program available online where his company dancers are filmed during their first class of the week (when they are cold and sore). Last Sunday, a sold-out crowd watched Cunningham’s 14 dancers at a stone’s throw in Beacon Event (2008). The 50-minute Event took place in the basement of Dia Beacon, a former factory converted into a modern art gallery 120 kilometers from Manhattan. The space was partially open to the elements (in this case the rain and wind) and partially drowned in cold darkness (like most basements). Sponsored by the Hudson Valley Project, the performance is part of a two-year project. Cunningham has agreed to choreograph eight Events (this is his third) in different parts of the gallery, using live musicians and quoting more than a half-century of his dance material. Watching Cunningham dancers in a theater versus in an area where audience and performers merge is the difference between being an unseen observer and being an acknowledged participant. While seated on Bruce Nauman’s Indoor Outdoor Seating Arrangement (1999)—which I believed was just a hastily but cleverly arranged set of four uncomfortable bleachers—I made constant eye contact with the dancers. It was startling and sometimes uncomfortable. Rather than observing the dancers performing, I saw they were experiencing. They too had never heard the quirky, meandering sounds, created by David Behrman, Miguel Frasconi, Marina Rosenfeld and Richard Teitelbaum. Like visitor from space, the dancers indicated with their bodies and eyes. I believed they had come in peace, but weren’t that interested in staying or making closer contact. They must have thought I was strange because I remained so inert. Because there were no wings or exits, the dancers never left the audience. Instead they walked off the black floor to sit and stretch near the choreographer, who was seated in a wheel chair and who dedicated the performance to his long-time colleague Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008). When Cunningham’s dancers weren’t moving like mechanical birds, swooping and hopping, soaring and balancing on their talon-like feet, they tried to stay warm by wrapping Army blankets around Anna Finke’s two sets of costumes—loose-fitting street wear and brightly-colored unitards with nature motifs at their edges. All of this was part of Beacon Event. To dance without theatrical illusions, to be tested by the elements and to try to make something beautiful out of chance events is Cunningham redux. Dancers Andrea Weber, Raushan Mitchell, Daniel Madoff and Julie Cunningham looked like they were enjoying it. Jennifer Goggans and Lisa Boudreau, however, looked less amused. I empathized. Cunningham’s choreography is damningly hard. But the serene Andrea Weber made it look easy. She spent a full three minutes pivoting on her left leg, while she repeatedly lifted her right leg over the heads of her two male partners. Because there was no meter, because her partners were busy moving up and down, and because they were not always supporting her, it was a miracle she didn’t stumble. Is she human? Yes, I saw her leg shake. But she is made of pristine stuff.
Though I prefer performances that cater to theatrical illusion, that don’t subject my rear end to hard bleachers or make me walk through treacherously dark spaces to get to my seat, I admired Beacon Event for letting me experience Cunningham's dancers in close quarters. The uncomfortable intimacy gave me something valuable. I feel that I know these dancers. I know that I admire them.
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