The company's postmodern technique, a fusion of numerous dance styles including ballet and modern, notably features a disconnect between the music and choreography, Christian Wolff, a member of the company's music committee, said at a July 8 pre-performance talk called "Music and Merce."
"Generally speaking, Cunningham dances and the music which accompanies them are not explicitly coordinated," Wolff said.
This detachment is a unique feature of Cunningham's choreography that is unparalleled in the world of dance, Swinston said.
The music and the choreography "run concurrently" in Cunningham dances, Wolff said. Neither medium exists to explain the other, which is an approach contrary to other choreographers'.
The Dartmouth performance of the "Legacy Tour" began with a dance entitled "RainForest," featuring dancers dressed in androgynous costumes and a simple decor of metallic, helium-filled "Silver Clouds" designed by Andy Warhol in 1968. This segment showcased Cunningham's synthesis of traditional ballet elegance and more erratic, unusual modern movements.
David Tudor's "Rainforest," a mixture of ambient noise and aleatoric electronic noise, played as the dancers glided, crawled and thrashed across the stage. The otherworldly quality of the music reflected the inhumanness of the dancers' movements, suggesting an inorganic inspiration for the performance.
In one instance during the dance, one performer crawled across the stage in a prone position as another dancer lay on his back, demonstrating the extreme positions that Cunningham pushed his dancers to explore. At other times, the dancers, seemingly oblivious to their environment, explored the space around them by elegantly leaping through and brazenly kicking the silver clouds.
The second portion, "Antic Meet," consisted of a series of skit-style dances steeped in the tradition of the absurd. The music "Concert for Piano and Orchestra," composed by Cunningham's life partner John Cage featured occasional trombone blares, violin screams and crashing piano chords, which contributed to the bizarre atmosphere of the dance.
In this segment, the performers appeared to demonstrate more overtly human emotions; in "Sports and Diversions," for example, two women jealously desired to outperform the other, pantomiming the act of blowing dust in each other's face. The staging included various props brought onstage by the dancers, including a chair strapped to a man's back, a door on wheels and a small dinner table. In one particularly memorable segment, a male dancer wrestled with a four-armed sweater that lacked a hole for his head, which received laughter from the audience.
In the final dance, "Squaregame," the stage was stripped of its backstage and wing areas. Every square inch of the stage became performance space, and all of the technical elements backstage, including lighting wires and ladders, were visible to the audience. All that remained onstage were the dancers and several sandbags.
As with the preceding works, the choreography combined gracefulness with sharp, jerky movements. By the end of the performance, the 13 dancers who participated in the action moved methodically and in tandem, giving the impression of a machine and all of its moving parts.
Cage's compositions greatly influenced Cunningham's choreography, Swinston said.
"John Cage and [Cunningham] influenced each other in the way they viewed the creation of music and dance," Swinston said.
Illustrating the disconnect between the music and dance in Cunningham's work, the Company's dancers never even hear the music during rehearsals, according to Swinston.
"This is quite unique because most choreographers and composers work directly in their collaboration to try to make a specific meaning of what they're doing," he said. "[Cage and Cunningham] were allowing the audience to basically complete the performance rather than telling them specifically what it means."
Jeffrey James, current director of the Hopkins Center and a former executive director of the Cunningham Company, has brought Cunningham's dances to the Dartmouth stage several times over the past few decades, Swinston said.
Swinston assumed the role of director of choreography after Cunningham's death in 2009. He has since reconstructed many of the earlier dances.
When the Legacy Tour ends on Dec. 31, 2012, the company will disband.
