Decades of dance

The remarkable career of modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham has spanned 50 years. His company, on tour to celebrate the anniversary, performs tonight in Tampa.

By MARTY CLEAR
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 25, 2003

[Publicity photo] This year Merce Cunningham celebrates a half-century as a modern dance pioneer.

A half-century ago, Merce Cunningham and John Cage developed a collaborative technique that still seems radical today.

Choreographer Cunningham and composer Cage would agree on an exact length for a work and then go their separate ways. The dance and the music would be created apart from one another. Cunningham wouldn't hear the music at all until the day he would perform the piece. It was left to the audience to connect the sound to the movement.

"Each person can fit the two together as they want," Cunningham said. "So many times we experience things simultaneously but separately. It's like a child who's working on his computer and has music playing and the television on at the same time."

That way of working, of combining music and dance at the last possible moment, has become a hallmark of Cunningham's remarkable, and remarkably long, career. Local audiences can see the results when the Merce Cunningham Dance Company comes to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center tonight. The company is on a tour celebrating its 50th year.

On the program are two pieces, Native Green from 1985 and Biped from 1999. Both use Cunningham's trademark technique of isolated collaboration, though neither has music by Cage.

Native Green is a piece for three couples, set to electronically altered guitar music by John King.

"The quality of it is very light," Cunningham said. "I think it's a quite lyric work. I was thinking that dancers should do more dancing together."

Biped involved a bit more in the way of traditional collaboration. Although the music (by Gavin Bryars) was created separately, Cunningham worked with decor designers Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser.

[Publicity photo] A young Merce Cunningham, dancing one of his early pieces, Changeling. He often created pieces in collaboration with composer John Cage, but the two worked separately.

Eshkar and Kaiser videotaped company dancers and then used motion capture software to enhance and alter the images, so they're often not even recognizable as human forms. The result is a sort of virtual choreography.

"It really is the first long piece we've done using the motion capture procedure," Cunningham said. "The images are projected on a scrim in front of the dancers. It's a moving decor."

The magic of Biped isn't confined to the scrim, though.

"We've found a way to make the dancers suddenly appear and disappear from the back of the stage," Cunningham said.

Biped employs 14 dancers and four musicians. The music for both Biped and Native Green will be performed live.

Apart from the effects Native Green and Biped have on the audience, Cunningham said the 14-year gap between the creation of the two should offer some insight into how his technique and choreography continue to evolve.

"My idea about technique was that I didn't want something fixed, so that conditions would bring about a change instead of a repetition," he said. "When we do pieces from the past we try to keep them as they were originally created. But you'll see that the movement in Biped is much more complex than in Native Green."

PREVIEW: The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will perform Biped and Native Green at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Ferguson Hall. Tickets are $34 and $44. Call (813) 229-7827.

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