Compagnie CNDC Angers - Robert Swinston bring three dances by Merce Cunningham to New York. Merce Cunningham didn’t want us to try to find stories in his dances. We obeyed. But dance can hint at the essential stories that lie deep under narratives that deal with, say, characters falling in love with the wrong person or being transformed into swans. Cunningham presented us with quiet … [Read more...]
The Merce Resurrection
Compagnie CNDC d'Angers stages a Merce Cunningham Event in New York City. When Merce Cunningham decided that his company should be disbanded two years after his death, it wasn’t entirely clear what he expected to happen to the nearly 200 dances that he had made over the course of five decades. Some, of course, had been lost along the way, but a good number had been filmed, and more were … [Read more...]
Afterlife Meeting
The composer John Cage died suddenly in August 1992. In March 1993, his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, premiered a new dance, Doubletoss. These two facts resonated together for anyone watching the work’s first performances. Cunningham said at the time that he had made two dances and merged them—ensuring that all 14 dancers knew both and using chance procedures to determine how the … [Read more...]