Mr. Cunningham requested that upon his death that his troupe be disbanded. He died in 2009 and The Legacy Tour, the last tour, is wrapping up in NYC in the next couple of weeks. I think the performances are sold out. I wish I had gotten more tickets. It is a time of great intensity in the modern dance world and it was palpable at BAM last night.
I'm not sure what it is about modern dance that I love - its three-dimensionality, its humanity, its abstract nature, its physicality - somehow it all adds up for me, and Merce Cunningham embodied the best of it. Last night they performed two pieces. The first piece was called Second Hand, and honestly the atonal John Cage score based on a Satie work really grated on my nerves. There were some beautiful moments, and the Jasper Johns costumes were pretty, but it was a bit boring. The second piece, Biped, blew me away. Cunningham choreographed it in 1999, when he was 80. He was an early adopter of technology, and at this point he had been choreographing on the computer for ten years. Biped employs imagery, captured from his dancers, projected over the live dance. Of course now, the digital age is in full swing, but just contemplate for a moment what I just wrote. He was a pioneer.
The result was layered and beautiful. My mind raced with associations ... his vision of the future is beautiful, man set against a gridded, digital backdrop, the life of the biped still very free and asymmetrical. He was a master of asymmetry ... although there may have been much thought that went into every piece, Cunningham's approach was very aesthetic - moves, costumes, music and set elements exist only to be visually interesting. I have a hard time with that, I always need a reason to create. I therefore try to assign meaning to the elements on stage, but the beautiful reality is that Merce Cunningham employed many elements just because they looked good ... his embrace of technology at 80 astounds me, both artistically and from a personal standpoint. It reminds me of my friend Barney Brown who used and appreciated his iPhone at 90. There is a lesson in that ... the piece, like most great art was at once naive and visionary. Cunningham employed everything at his disposal. The costumes were some sort of holographic material, the projections simple and graphic, the dance rooted in the 20th century modern tradition, nothing exceptional by today standards, yet the the sum total of these parts was transcendent, even today ... the performing arts are fleeting. What change the dancers must be going through. How sad that this exciting era in dance is coming to a close. How sad it is that Mr. Cunningham is gone. I am getting so old. The dancers are so young. There is much promise in the Merce Cunningham legacy. I must go see more dance ... I have finally learned to embrace the wanderings of my mind during a dance performance. That is part of it, like meditation, you just bring your mind gently back to the mantra, to the dancers coming and going, creating beautiful forms, imitating life, relating to one another ... this is art for me.
