For its final Joyce season before disbanding in December 2011 at the end of its two-year Legacy Tour, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will give audiences the extraordinary opportunity to see Cunningham’s choreography performed by the final group of dancers he personally trained in a repertory program that has not been seen in New York for decades. In addition to two Cunningham masterworks — CRWDSPCR and Quartet — this special engagement will feature Antic Meet, an iconic piece, not seen since 1969, that captures the exuberant and collaborative spirit that existed between the choreographer and Robert Rauschenberg.
In Time Out New York this week, several “insiders” (including dancers Daniel Madoff and Rashaun Mitchell and Executive Director Trevor Carlson) provide an oral history of the acclaimed work.
(Excerpted from the article)
Daniel Madoff
It’s apparent from the video that the piece, for Merce at least, seems to be dramatically driven, which isn’t usual. You can just tell by looking at him that the movements are almost secondary to the motivation of what’s behind the movement. He plays everything pretty deadpan, but you can tell that there is such vivid inspiration for everything that he does. And you can also probably assume that every time he performed the piece, it was slightly different. There are some firsthand accounts that verified that feeling. [Laughs] It became pretty clear to me that I needed to investigate, not only what exactly what he was doing—stepping left, right, left, right—but, and I hesitate to say this, but why? Why was he doing that? What was the central concept behind each of his actions? I tried to think of it sometimes as if it were a theater piece. There doesn’t seem to be really a through-line for his “character,” but there seem to be definite choices being made in each of the vignettes.
Sandra Neels (former company member who restaged Antic Meet)
Because my background was tap—and Merce’s background was tap—I always learned his pieces rhythmically. One night at dinner with Robert Swinston [director of choreography], I said, “I bet you that I could dance Antic Meet still. I can remember every rhythm that I ever danced in that piece.” I moved around to other people’s parts; we did it on a world tour and whenever someone got injured, I jumped in. Robert said, “We have an old, very fuzzy video that was taken onstage in Finland in 1964. Do you want to look at it?” The next day, I went into the small studio and began to take notes. It does look like you’re watching dances in a blizzard. You couldn’t see who anybody was, but I remembered the rhythm of it, so I could tell who was doing what. I said, “Why don’t you give me a shot at it?”
Trevor Carlson (executive director, Merce Cunningham Dance Company)
In the late ’50s, there was a 25-year retrospective of John Cage’s work; that season, he made Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and the composition of that piece was his taking all of the forms of notation and different types of music-making and incorporating each one of them in the score. It was his own retrospective piece in a score. In Antic Meet, Merce took John’s music and made a dance that, frankly, is a retrospective of his study of dance up to that point: It’s got soft-shoe, acrobatics, ballroom, Graham—everything Merce studied, he built into the choreography. And Rauschenberg also made a retrospective—you find quintessential elements: the umbrella, the parachute, the white dress shirt with black tie, overalls, lace tablecloths, sunglasses…
Read the full article here.
