Daniel Madoff and Julie Cunningham of Merce Cunningham Dance Company in XOVER. Photo by Kawakahi Amina.
There are moments in a lifetime of dancegoing (and I am sure all readers can compile their own lists) that you wish you could replay instantly. Those moments seem to fall into two categories. In one case, there’s simply too much information to process at one viewing. In the other instance, the dance plunges you into such a blissful mood that you want to restore it as quickly as possible. Last Saturday evening (Nov. 15), after the West Coast premiere of Merce Cunningham’s XOVER at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, this writer felt that urgent desire for instant time travel, for both of those reasons. It is as mellow a late masterpiece as any you could name.
Completed in 2007, during the choreographer’s 88th year, XOVER is an artful, large ensemble disquisition on the duet form, anchored by a central episode for a couple (here, Brandon Collwes and Emma Desjardins) that is as technically demanding as it is emotionally resonant. It all begins with a flurry of group activity, including clinging encounters, outbreaks of arabesques, perhaps quotations from other works (like the under the armpits supports from Balanchine’s Four Temperaments). The air clears and Collwes and Desjardins engage in a sequence of exquisite adagio moves, suggestive of nothing more of a master calligrapher’s creation. Courtliness is suggested with bent-knee maneuvers, but there’s no feeling of conventional gender roles in this series of walks, slides and cantilevers. Yet, Cunningham, in what observers may consider atypical, offers a contrast. Behind Collwes and Desjardins, other couples spin their way across Robert Rauschenberg’s backdrop, twisting their way from wing to wing (hence, the title).
Leaps in place cadence the work, but the emotional content is undeniable. XOVER seems to reinforce the Cunningham aesthetic, in which the non-causality of events democratizes the theater experience. Rauschenberg’s costumes are neutral, flowing white. His backdrop includes part of a bicycle and red-and-white traffic barriers, reminiscent of the artist’s celebrated combines. The music, however, presents a problem. It is hard to ignore John Cage’s Aria with Fontana Mix, during which a soprano (here, an uncertain Aurora Josephson) sings, mutters and, at stage right, performs on a series of percussive non-instruments. This Dadaist excursion can prove distracting for many observers; lack of interdependence evolves into a contest for the viewer’s attention. In this case, the eloquence of the movement won out. Surely, there’s a message in there, somewhere.
This final performance of this historic Cal Performances residency of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company also offered a rare reconstruction. Crises (1960) was performed during the troupe’s initial Berkeley engagement in 1962, and according to Cunningham archivist David Vaughan, disappeared from the repertoire after the 1964 tour. Former MCDC members Carolyn Brown and Carol Teitelbaum steered the revival staging in 2006.
Four decades have not blunted the antic wit of CrisesL, here performed with verve by Julie Cunningham, Holley Farmer, Jennifer Goggans, Rashaun Mitchell and Andrea Webber, and set to a selection of Conlon Nancarrow’s Rhythmic Studies for Player Piano (in rather muddy recordings). The choreographer seems to test possibilities of audience manipulation as well as scrutinizing tropes of avant-garde theater here. But, it’s all purveyed with eminent good cheer. How else should we interpret Cunningham’s solo turns and meaningful gazes into the auditorium as she negotiates her way across the stage? How else can we take Farmer and Mitchell, as they run through a litany of modern dance and ballet moves, from extreme arabesques to exuberant grands battements to old-fashioned vaudeville splits?
The Nancarrow music, which veers into boogie-woogie, evokes an atmosphere in which anything can happen. From what resembles a testing of dancers’ techniques arises an absurdist playing field. Where else in Cunningham’s dances will you find the almost hysterical windmilling arms delivered with such relish by Jennifer Goggans? This revival of Crises is shameless in its comic verve and absolutely irresistible.
The 2004 Views on Stage was presented at Stanford Memorial Auditorium shortly after its Edinburgh premiere and is notable first for its arresting décor by Ernesto Nero, whose suspended white globs suggest frozen cow udders. Mitchell’s remarkable jumps (with one leg extended, no less) launch a playful array of solo gambits and group forays, which both confound expectations and transform them. Unisons coagulate and dissolve, lifts are bold, insteps become the center of attention and everything proceeds with an insouciant (and deceptive) air of improvisation. A few teetering balances aside, this was a splendid performance, with Farmer working her gamine charm for all it is worth. The Cage scores were rendered by Christian Wolff, Takehisa Kosugi and William Winant.
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