"It was unutterably moving to watch," said long time company archivist David Vaughan of the historic reconstruction of "Roaratorio" (1983) that graced Merce Cunningham Dance Company's fare-thee-well performances at Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall the weekend of June 4.
"We all feel Merce in the dance."
Watching company elder Robert Swinston, 60, clad in purple trousers, perform Cunningham's solo midway through "Roaratorio's" heady deconstruction of Irish social dance, you recognize the great departed dancer/choreographer's idiosyncratic gestures.
The way Merce liked to lunge sideways, how he would kick like a Rockette while walking, stab a straight arm to advance himself through space ... seeing this, you miss him. It makes you remember the thrilling moment when he would join his (young) group on stage -- and the way his odd elfin presence, and his separateness, would affect the proceedings.
"Roaratorio," for me, needed two viewings. The same dance whose hard-core relentlessness almost broke me on Friday, two days later swelled my emotions with its sensual beauty!
Sunday's outpost in Disney Hall's uppermost rows gave the most pleasurable perspective. There, on high, the aural flotsam and jetsam of John Cage's brilliant Ireland-derived score wafted through the air. (James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" inspired the ambient sound collage -- seagulls, car traffic, baby cries, moos, neighs.) And you could gaze down on Cunningham's immensely contained, rigorous choreographic chess game.
The unceasing pageant of "Roaratorio" is revealed through many memorable dance episodes; Swinston indicates 36 components contributed to the whole. In the sequence that, for me, forms the heart of the ballet's long contiguous outpouring, four to five dancers traverse the stage, freely and grandly, adding and dropping colleagues from the wings as they go. It's the tide washing over the shore, dislodging and dispersing pebbles and seaweed with each swipe. A man enters, but rather than join the pulsating group, he lifts and puts down a woman without losing a beat. It's abstract, beautiful patterning, and when Cunningham adds the unexpected lift you think, aha, so this is choreography.
By "Roaratorio's" end, you're seeing an Irish village. The community's youngsters engage in mating duets, facing one another, raising and holding hands high to the side. Only it's fractured fairy tales; they're broken puppets and it's all off-sync; they're herky-jerky reelers. Right at that moment, perfectly, a sheep rudely bleets in Cage's score.
Other couples seem older: crisscrossing arms, they conduct a foggy do-si-do, slowly, methodically, promenading the stage. Here, a touch of Irish melancholia seeps in.
Merce, we knew ye well. He was the dance world's leprechaun.
Cunningham trademarks are all present: the plethora of leaps (for a long stretch the dance seems to be all leaping), the stage-skittering "triplets," the calmly planted big-bird arabesques, and, most familiar, upper-torso arches with sudden side- or upward-tilts of the head. Who else does this move? No one. Only Merce Cunningham.
Walt Disney Concert Hall as a dance venue! The dancers, when "off duty," repair to seats behind the stage, still in full audience view, and there they rest, sip from water bottles and await re-entry. One cannot help but muse that architect Frank Gehry upholstered these seats with vibrant flowered fabric to honor his patron Lillian Disney's love of gardening. And how we would do the same for Merce if only we could ... hand him a huge bouquet.
Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed "Roaratorio" at the Montpellier Dance Festival, Montpellier, France on June 18-20. They continue their tour throughout the summer in Spain, Germany, Greece, England, and New York. Please click here for more.
Los Angeles arts journalist Debra Levine blogs at arts•meme.
Follow Debra Levine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/debra_levine
More please . . . !
to accept that Merce Cunningham and all that came with his dance company is now...gone.
As an entity, it was perhaps the greatest work of conceptual art that could possibly have been
shoved into the tent of that heading. It was through Merce that many of saw and heard so much
more of John Cage and his icon shattering influence than we otherwise would have. So many
of the remarkable artists from the Black Mountain College era came together there, in music,
in dance, in art. I'll never forget Tesla by Pauline Oliveros whom David Tudor called a "dreamboat,"
his highest compliment. And David Tudor himself became reborn as a stunning composer of
live electronic music after his stunning brief time as a pianists that one well known composer
compared to Liszt. David's Rainforest circuit was elegance and simplicity. I can risk using
first names here, since I knew them all. Why? Because they were so decent to student musicians
that everyone knew them. They were open for business with anyone who took them seriously
enough to ask good questions. Nobody with real interest got left out of the tent. Oh how I miss
them.
Speaking of Christo, I remember marvelling at "The Gates" in Central Park a few years back and trying to explain to the people I was with the significance of such a work...
They must have thought I was nuts...
I have always taken this advice and it has served me well....
A case in point is Cage's "Sonatas and Preludes for Prepared Piano" - I went from not being able to listen to it to the belief that it is one of the most haunting, atmospheric and beautiful pieces I have ever experienced...
but I'm working on it. He told me that a childhood ambition was to be a pianist specializing
in the music of Edvard Grieg. That was when he was teaching at U.C. Davis, and I was a
graduate student there.
That's very interesting (about Grieg) - I also remember reading that Arnold Schoenberg once told him that if he continued composing the kind of music that he was that he would inevitably hit a wall; to which Cage responded that if he did, he would just go over it...
Was he held in high regard at UC Davis?