If you have ever looked at a single painting for more than an hour, or listened to a whole jazz album without moving, you can begin to understand the intensity of absorbing 90 minutes of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event.
No less than 15 dancers, three musicians and a painting by Robert Rauschenberg filled the Moore Theater last night to create, as Cunningham said, "not so much an evening of dances as the experience of dance."
Cunningham claims that his Events are never repeated. The audience perceives a unique phenomena of changing music and choreography. World-renown musicians improvise original works for each Cunningham Event, unpredictably combining electro-acoustics with vocals and piano.
Theses bizarre rhythms and vocal interjections do not necessarily coordinate with the dance or the lighting, forcing the audience to synthesize these independent artistic creations.
The spectators can view the dancers from one, two, three or four sides depending on theater conditions which have ranged from a museum to a basketball court.
But in the smaller Moore Theater, the collage of arts and genres which resulted easily overwhelmed the unprepared observer.
Dancers appeared from the wings to execute flawless classical ballet combinations, and then unexpectedly departed on tangents of modern, Martha Graham-like dance. Two dancers might pause, twisted into a momentary sculpture, while four others mimic a game of jacks while slowly gliding across the floor. Unshielded by curtains, dancers sat or stretched in the wings, the un-used tools of the artist waiting to be called into action.
Although the scraping violin and violent percussion accompanying the dancers intruded on the Event, the entire experience mesmerized the audience into an artistic trance where almost anything Cunningham chose to include would be acceptable.
The quality of the dancers cannot be questioned, and Cunningham uses their bodies to their limits. He choreographs complex themes, interspersed with almost narrative series, and re-works the initial patterns in countless variations throughout the Event.
Even without understanding the artistic traditions and techniques that Cunningham draws on, the audience can grasp the beauty of the final product which appears on the stage, and appreciate the choreographer's genius visually manifested in the living sculpture of dancers.
Cunningham, a former soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company, has performed and choreographed for the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Paris Opera Ballet and for several films. Called the "patriarch of modern American dance" by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cunningham has been heralded around the world as one of this century's most important choreographers.
In the words of Mikhail Baryshinikov, he "reinvented dance, and then waited for the audience." After five decades of composition, audiences now wait for him. He sells out not only the Moore but theaters across the world.
Now 78, Cunningham still travels with the troupe he formed in 1953 from a group of dancers at Black Mountain College, a progressive liberal arts college in North Carolina. Cunningham had been improvising for years with the founding musical director, John Cage, and the new group provided a focus for their combined artistic expression.
The group also collaborated with several famed visual artists over the years, including Jasper Johns -- whose work is currently on display in the Hood Museum -- and Andy Warhol. More recently, Cunningham dancers have appeared in "Ocean," a full-length film shown at the Lincoln Center Film Festival.
Over the years, Cunningham has received many awards for his work including the 1990 National Medal of Arts and a MacArthur Fellowship.
His troupe now consists of dancers with years of experience in dozens of companies from the New York City Ballet to the London Contemporary Dance Company to the White Oak Dance project; they are an impressive collection of individuals working with a master to create an impressive Event.
An Event can be seen again tonight in the Moore.
