When I first did the Cunningham warm up series, I was relieved. Relieved to see pointed feet, held arms, first positions, plies, essentially remnants of my lifelong ballet training that I could fall back on. Compared with last year’s Tharp movement, which was a sort of anti-technique while still retaining some technique (if that makes sense), the Cunningham style is quite heavily ballet-influenced. Sure, legs are often turned in, arms held rigid, backs inverted, but in a general sense, it is the ballet movement vocabulary from which Cunningham takes its cues. For me, finding this balletic aspect in such a modern style was like rereading a favorite childhood book with a more mature, theoretical eye: it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it also shed light on the limitations of my first encounter. This time, I realize the physical shortcuts I took to achieve the ballet body aesthetic. That is simply impossible with the Cunningham movement, since it takes ballet and adds torso twists and arches and awkward rhythms and turned hips. Cheating is not an option. And I don’t think Merce would have had it any other way.