Barefoot Dancers and Toe Shoes as Instruments
By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Yes, Merce Cunningham invited two experimental rock bands, Radiohead and Sigur Ros, to write and perform music for his latest choreography, "Split Sides."

 

No, this premiere for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's 50th anniversary gala at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night did not turn into a rock concert with dancers.

As many a guest collaborator has learned, there is no way to upstage Merce Cunningham, pope of the dance avant-garde, or his work. Good sports, Radiohead from Britain and Sigur Ros from Iceland were relegated to an atypical role as pit musicians. Somewhat tame in the Cunningham context, barely seen but certainly heard, they implicitly agreed that the emphasis was on the dancers onstage above them.

Still, to paraphrase a line from "Hamlet," what's rock music to Merce or he to rock? The answer was not easy to find, although an aura of risk hung festively in the air as the evening opened with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praising Mr. Cunningham on the same stage. Past collaborators — including the painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg — stood by and the musicians, lined up, looked amused and somewhat perplexed as dancers jumped up and down or fell to the floor behind them during the speeches. Typical Cunningham simultaneity and assemblage.

The program, part of the academy's Next Wave Festival, also featured the New York premiere of Mr. Cunningham's "Fluid Canvas," which was followed by "Split Sides." Both are visually stunning works enhanced by their lighting and ingenious décor, featuring choreography that continually transforms itself into what it is initially not.

Juxtaposed, "Fluid Canvas" and "Split Sides" offer a contrast in how music and dance do or do not relate. Whatever the intrinsic merits of the 20-minute score that each rock band composed for itself, the music sounded conventional to anyone used to 40 years of Cunningham sound, which has ranged from high-decibel to virtually inaudible. Melody has not been totally absent from Cunningham composers, but they avoid the regularity in tempo and meter that even art rock bands like these still use.

Sigur Ros cheated a bit charmingly. With that band's lulls and volcanic rumbles and its handmade xylophone of toe shoes, it could not resist following the dancers. Little creaky sounds began to accompany the movements of a convoluted dance trio, turning the dancers into windup dolls just as a duet took on a tinge of a music-box dance.

By contrast, in "Fluid Canvas," John King used his electronic score to give the dancers ample space to roam. Dynamic shifts here have nothing to do with beats, and Cunningham dancers do not dance to the music. Like the modern-dance pioneers before him, Mr. Cunningham discarded the idea that one art form represents another, that the dance translates music.

Pushed to an extreme, his own idea that dance and music should coexist as independent entities when they are brought together at a performance suggests that the dancers ignore the music and that any music will do.

Yes, but how it all comes together is what finally matters. When Mr. Cunningham stages an "Event," which consists of fragments of different dances, the music is often not composed for that choreography.

Some of this mix-and-match idea was used in "Split Sides." After he was introduced by Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Cunningham described how rolls of the dice by his past collaborators onstage would determine the order of two sets of artistic elements in "Split Sides." One roll (performed earlier that day) determined that Part B of Mr. Cunningham's choreography would follow Part A. Another roll, by Carolyn Brown, his former partner, determined that Radiohead would perform for Part A and Sigur Ros for Part B. Rolls by Sage Cowles, a longtime patron, and by Mr. Johns and Mr. Rauschenberg, Mr. Cunningham's former artistic advisers, determined the order of two sets of décor, costumes and lighting design.

Not entirely gimmicky, these procedures have much to do with the elements of chance that go into the composition of Cunningham choreography. Once composed, the dancing is not improvised.

Similarly, a dice roll might pair Robert Heishman's green-and-white photographic images with Part B of Mr. Cunningham's choreography rather than Part A, as on Tuesday. These images might then give a very different context to the dancing.

The rock groups will be heard on tape tonight through Saturday. But the combinations of the production elements might or might not be different.

Any review of "Split Sides," then, must be in the past tense. On Tuesday the performance started out with seven dancers facing the audience in darkened silhouette. James F. Ingalls's lighting — described as the 300 Series (does it matter?) — suddenly bathed the stage in a bright glow. Mr. Heishman, a 18-year-old photographer who uses a homemade pinhole camera, suspended a large disc with a rim over the stage and offered a backdrop of green and white surfaces. In this hothouse atmosphere, with Radiohead's initially light phrases and clicks followed by speech, wailing and thicker textures, the dancers concentrated on stillness, shifts of weight and, increasingly, springs.

James Hall's white leotards with black markings made them look like grazing zebras. Holding arms up, lurching forward, they broke up into smaller units. The formality was jarred when Holley Farmer walked in casually to begin a duet with Daniel Squire. When she bent her knees and dropped backward alarmingly, he ran to catch her. So much for improvisation. It was all a thoroughly precise dance, and Radiohead's percussion made the single woman at the end look quite solitary.

Part B began with Mr. Ingalls's lighting (200 Series) burning through the suspended disc and revealing a new backdrop by Catherine Yass. Her vertical blues and mauves made for painterly glassy drapes, a magical foil for the onrush of dancers in Mr. Hall's colored jumpsuits with squiggly designs. A repeated phrase by Sigur Ros contrasted with the fast and lively steps. A recurring motif had a woman hang by the neck of the man behind her. Music and dance here made for humor, but also virtuosity (Jonah Bokaer's solo). Four couples danced to a rumbling sound and spread out in a larger group, continuing to move as the curtain came down.

"Split Sides" is a difficult dance technically, and the entire company did more than admirably.

In "Fluid Canvas" (2002) the dancers had a more serene austere beauty. Many wore Mr. Hall's shiny gray leotards, but some changed into purple ones as they expanded a head-cocked, curved-arm look into intricate duets (Ms. Farmer and Mr. Bokaer) and solos (Derry Swan). There was something right about a more intimate use of the motion-capture technology that Mr. Cunningham used to spectacular effect a few years ago in "Biped." Here, sensors attached to his joints produced an abstract film of his moving fingers on the backdrop. It was a hands-on touch from an artist whose imprint is unmistakable.

Source: NY Times