The dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham has died, age 90. He had one of the longest, most artistically rich, lives on record.
This piece about him, marking a lecture he gave at Stanford, evokes that richness.
An excerpt:
In 1966, Cunningham collaborated with filmmaker Stan Van Der Beek to produce Variations V, the first of its kind “dance film.” What must have excited Cunningham about this venture was how the camera could work as a creative instrument, framing and structuring the look and feel of dance in a way that differed tremendously from viewing a performance in a concert hall. Variations V is also intriguing as an early and consummate example of the collage-like effect of multimedia. The dancers perform in a dark space broken up by vertical antennae, photoelectric devices, and a plant-like object. Multiple projection screens, with moving images from film and television, displayed both the sublime (man’s walk on the moon) and the mundane (a man coming home to his house in suburbia). As the dancers advance near the antennae, or cut through beams of photoelectric light, they trip sensors that emit the electronic bleeps and blips of John Cage’s musical score. Ambient sound, an occasional piano solo, and the auditory snow that one hears between radio stations contributed to the complexity of Cage’s soundscape. Movement ranges from elaborate ensembles, with dancers rolling, spinning, and somersaulting on the floor to unusual solos (Cunningham pulls off the leaves of the plant-like object, only to replace them later; a female dancer, sporting a 1960s dress fit for a go-go club, stands on her head). The hypersensory event is completed with the projection of bright spotlights and spiral patterns on the stage that are sometimes superimposed on the dancers’ bodies.