Dance, chance and visual invention
Modern dance genius Merce Cunningham was an imposing figure: a tall and angular man, with a prodigious work ethic and a voice like a narrator from the “Twilight Zone.” Yet he refused to elevate what he did beyond the elemental.
“I’m a dancer,” he once told an interviewer who was seeking to define him. “That’s sufficient for me.”
He’s the subject of “Cunningham,” a documentary by Alla Kovgan that’s as open to experimentation as he was. It’s structurally daring, presented in 3D, and devoted to showing rather than explaining, via archival footage and colourful new interpretations of the artist’s canon. (He died at age 90 in 2009, creating until the very end.)
Often working with his life partner John Cage, the avantgarde composer, as well as members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the iconoclastic New York dancer and choreographer sought to challenge audiences as he embraced chance and spontaneity. Music accompanied his work, but he danced almost in opposition to it.
“It is for me a question of faith and the continuous belief in the surprise of the instant,” he says via voiceover narration.
Cunningham and his troupe revolutionized modern dance, but they weren’t always appreciated for their efforts, to say the least. At a performance in Paris, they had to dodge tomatoes and eggs thrown by a bewildered and angry audience.
“I looked at the tomato near me and wished it was an apple,” Cunningham says. “I was hungry.”
This was typical of his dry sense of humour. Cunningham tells the story of touring America with his troupe packed into a Volkswagen minibus. They stopped to refuel, and the dancers all got out to stretch near the pumps.
“The gas station attendant asked me if we were a group of comedians. “I said, ‘No, we’re from New York.’ ”