Dear readers,
I was invited by Art Forum to be one of three dance writers providing their responses to this extraordinary celebratory Event, which occurred exactly one hundred years after Merce Cunningham’s birth in three cities: New York, San Francisco, and London. Seventy-five dancers participated and a host of former Cunningham company members taught material from his dancer.
Here is the link to my contribution:
https://www.artforum.com/performance/night-of-100-solos-a-centennial-eventnew-york-79578
And here are Megan Metcalf’s:
And here is Martin Hargreaves’:
The daffodils are blooming. Let’s lighten our hearts.
Deborah
Can’t wait to read what you saw and have to say about it!
In 1968 I was working as a stagehand at the University of Colorado’s Mackey Auditorium where Merce Cunningham & Co were in residence. The memory of Merce hurling himself flailing and thrashing in a clear plastic bag across the stage in “Place’ was indelible and has stayed with me since. A year later I met Deborah Jowitt, also at CU. A year earlier she had begun writing a weekly column for the Village Voice. Those two, Cunningham and Jowitt have never been far from the forefront of my brain ever since. Merce, alas, is gone but he lives on in the writing of the incomparable Jowitt.
I too well remember Merce thrashing his way out of (or maybe deeper into) a plastic bag. I’m honored to be linked with him in Farrell Dyde’s brain.