New "eyeSpace", "Crises", "Xover"
Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
December 12, 2008
by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson
A series that proceeds from less to more abstract might be: Merce Cunningham choreography, chess, calculus. Which of the following would be more abstract: the Cunningham choreography or a Cecchetti ballet class, chess or go or the glass bead game? What is very actual and unabstract about all three of the Cunningham dances on this program are the dancers - their bodies, their minds and their off-ballet training. Cunningham, though, is the Magister Ludi. He plays with the dancers' attributes. His world becomes a game board as he arranges positions on stage and plans moves in-place or into space. His world becomes the anatomy theater as he dissects bodies bloodlessly to demonstrate surfaces and expose hinges. His world is the laboratory in which he tests resilience, velocity and equipoise. Much of the work is clear, efficient, elegant. Even the occasional doodle looks deliberate and pristine. What, then, in the choreography or dancing makes "eyeSpace" be itself and not "Xover"? Or are the different Cunningham titles all part of one immense, open-ended opus? Is it possible to like one title more than another apart from its sound, gear or particular dancers? Yes, but just barely.
In "eyeSpace" it was balance that caught my attention. The four dancers who appear first seem very concerned with keeping it, finding it, varying it in movement which is predominantly semi-unison. Their gray shinywear is tight and displays body planes, joints, gender. Even when the motion vocabulary and plot expand and other dancers replace the initial woman and three men, balancing seemed thematic. That may have been due my perception and, anyway, isn't equipoise a movement norm? The dancers were barefoot and that, perhaps in conjunction with timing, highlighted rising to demi pointe and down steps.
The decor for "eyeSpace" showed two architectural sections for an art deco theater, the higher one sometimes hidden by a blind. The blind, a black drop, moved imperceptibly. There was no art deco styling I could see in the choreography. The printed program correctly referred to this dance-decor-music constellation as a Washington premiere although the "eyeSpace" title had appeared on the Cunningham company's previous program here at Harman Hall. Then the design had been Henry Samelson's multicolored notations for the costumes and stage space. This season's Daniel Asham designs, the art deco ones, apparently were intended for another Cunningham title - "Ode/Eon". Was this season's David Behrman music also played last time? In last season's dancing I remember squiggles, temporary imbalances, more than balancing. Why did Cunningham, when he could have called this constellation "eyeTime", keep the old name?
"Xover", the program closer, was of 2007 vintage like "eyeSpace", the opener. Both have a cast of 7 women and 6 men. "Xover" is dominated by its backdrop, a blowup of a Robert Rauschenberg painting - selective social realist depictions of transportation implements such as a bicycle, wooden barricade slats, a huge cement dam or overpass. Blank patches separate painted ones in this "quilt". Rauschenberg had wanted the dancers to wear white costumes and Cunningham complied, as usual with tight ones. There is also a quilt, collage or overlapping effect in the choreography of "Xover" due to the way Cunningham brings on subgroups of the 13 dancers. The emphasis seems to be an examination of the pas de deux. The music, two titles by John Cage, stressed musical sounds less than non-musical ones.
Revived from 1960 was "Crises" for four women and a man. There's no decor but the dancers' overall tights are color intense: red for two women and the man, yellow and orange for the two other women. Music - some of Conlon Nancarrow's bravura rhythm studies for the player piano - was more in the foreground than usual and did seem to share elements - speed, acceleration, lag - with the choreography. Was there a difference between this title from Cunningham's middle period and the 2007 works? According to panelists* in the post-performance discussion, later Cunningham is more complex - anatomically, spatially, dynamically. They should know, but I don't think I could tell new from old if next time Cunningham grafted a passage from "Crises" and "Xover" together. Both are complex in several respects but look so securely and honestly danced that there's a seeming simplicity.
Still, I have my favorites and wouldn't want to see a potpourri of all Cunningham choreography. Last visit's "Second Hand" - with its echoes of a story, a situation - was special. It focuses on a figure with human characteristics. Although they were as abstracted from legend as chess pieces from the personages whose names they bear, the characteristics gave "Second Hand" an added dimension. Cunningham's tidal "Ocean" of a few seasons ago was, surprisingly, almost Wagnerian. On this program one could see bodies align and reorient, stretch, bend, release, topple, rebound and all the while be male or female. One could look at paths cross, orbit, intertwine or merge and watch a rhythm build and change. These pleasures - less abstract than those aroused by following the proof of a theorem - seemed particularly rich in the new "eyeSpace", yet I wouldn't at all want to have missed the two other titles. Now, I think I'll take "The Glass Bead Game" off the shelf and open it again.
*Robert Swinston (Assistant to the Choreographer, dancer), David Vaughan (Cunningham Archivist, critic/historian) and dancers Daniel Madoff, Julie Cunningham and Melissa Toogood were the panelists; critic/historian Suzanne Carbonneau moderated.
