September 23, 2006
Underwater
I appreciate that this may make me a philistine in the eyes of some, but I've really never liked Merce Cunningham. His work is just too dogmatically modernist for my taste, too self-consciously abstract -- and I say that as one who loves modernism and abstraction. Such formalism is all very well in architecture and painting, even -- sometimes -- in literature, but there's only so far you can take it in dance before you lose nearly everything of value in the form. Cunningham's choreography is dance with all the joy and beauty and physicality removed. It's as if he's so afraid of being pretty and sentimental -- of being bourgeois -- that he wilfully ignores the fact that dance only exists through the medium of real human bodies. It is innately figurative. You don't have to graft artificial allusiveness onto dance, it already resonates inside the viewer with every movement. Cunningham's rejection of that -- his fastidious rooting out and removal of every hint of meaning or content or gestural recognition -- is an extraordinary labour, and perhaps had some actual value back in the 1950s, but it tends to make for unbearably tedious performances. I hope that he and John Cage had a hot time in the sack -- it would be sad if the personal side of their lifelong partnership was as passionless as their professional collaborations. Case in point: Ocean, created after Cage's death based on ideas the couple had been developing up to that point, playing this week at the Roundhouse (that place again). Ian took it into his head that we should go and I reluctantly agreed. It had been a few years since my last Cunningham experience; perhaps I might turn out to have grown out of my earlier judgements? You need to test these things out from time to time, just to see. Remind me not to do that again. It was 90 minutes of torture -- 90 minutes to the second, cruelly counted up on screens all around the stage so that you could always see at a glance just how fucking long still remained -- utterly shapeless random movements accompanied by a discordant vaguely-aquatic noisescape of relentless banality. It was like a cheap parody of all that is most indulgent and pretentious in dance theatre, except most parodists would have tried to make it at least a little bit funny. Needless to say, it got a rapturous ovation from at least a portion of the audience; but by then quite a lot had walked out, unable to take any more.Posted by matt at September 23, 2006 11:43 PM
Comments
Oh, dear.
Posted by: Faustus, M.D. at September 24, 2006 03:16 AM
well, i'm a huge cunningham fan, studied at the studio for ten years, and know the whole body of merce's work as well as any non-professional scholar of dance could. and yet, i know what you mean. i even saw 'ocean' a year or so ago, and was also quite bored.
still, i'm sorry you've never had the 'aha' moment with merce's work, because when it all comes together, there's nothing like it on the planet. first, to watch just the dance element, with all narrative, most gesture, and that dread meaning removed, you have to have your merce-eyes in. you know those days when you're fascinated, just sitting by a pond watching the insects jump on the water? you have to bring that.
i'd also like to point out that while his work may make you think of indulgence and pretention, it's not itself in the least indulgent or pretentious. it's an honest and rigorous expression of his ideas about what art can be. i understand if his idea of art doesn't work for you; others i admire have the same response. (my dear sister, who lives in new york and is my favorite seatmate for performances in new york, hates merce too.) but blaming merce for pretentious and indulgent dance theater is like blaming shakespeare for all the cliches.
anyway, i'm thrilled to have you writing about dance again. did you get to see mark morris's 'king arthur'? morris' 'mozart dances' (coming to london in summer 2007) is one of the best evenings he's done in several years.
fondly,
patrick in ny
Posted by: patrick in ny at September 25, 2006 04:00 AM
[patrick] Yes, it was mostly you I was thinking of in that very first clause; I'm glad you can forgive me.
I did indeed see King Arthur -- I thought I'd written about it here, actually, but apparently not. It was, without a doubt, one of the mostly useless pieces of twaddle Morris has ever produced, an altogether dimwitted and disappointing evening. Stupidly, I was hoping for another Dido and Aeneas or L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, but this was cheap pantomime of the laziest kind.
It was a marked contrast to Nixon in China a few weeks earlier, in which Morris's choreography took a back seat and worked brilliantly, adding another layer of excitement to an already quite astonishing evening of operatic brilliance. King Arthur, unfortunately, foregrounded choreographic drivel at the expense of everything else.
It's been quite awhile since I last saw Morris on form, so I shall look forward to Mozart Dances eagerly.
In the meantime, this Saturday brings an evening of dance -- by Akram Khan, Richard Alston and the great Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker -- to music by Steve Reich, which should be rather splendid. I shall report in due course...
Posted by: matt at September 28, 2006 10:24 PM
oh dear, i was afraid about 'king arthur'. i talked with one of mark's dancers after the premiere and she was suspiciously non-committal. but the mozart evening is truly great. (and that particular dancer, a tiny blonde named lauren grant, was brilliant in that evening)
i'm seeing nearly the same reich program you are; de keersmaker's 'fase' to early reich, paired with khan's piece to a new reich score. very, very excited. there's a lot of steve reich's music being played in new york in the next month; i'm hoping to attend other concerts as well.
all the best,
patrick
Posted by: patrick in ny at September 29, 2006 04:26 PM
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