When developing a semester-long project such as this one, I imagine there are many questions to be answered. Particularly with an artist such as Merce Cunningham, who has an enormous body of work and also a challenging, well-developed technique, there are many ways one could go about immersing us, the students, in the work. What is the value of giving us a chance to delve into many works from his prolific career versus the value of getting an in-depth look at one work, the value of learning repertory versus training our bodies in Cunningham technique. Six hours a week may seem like a lot to those of us booked with classes and other projects, but with so much we could learn it is an extraordinarily short amount of time.

In light of all of this, I think that Jen, Meg, Emily and everyone involved in the planning of this project have done an incredible job of balancing these different facets of the Cunningham experience, if you will. We had the incredible experience of working extensively on a large section of one important work (Roaratorio), gaining glimpses of other works (Numbers, Canfield, Pond Way), and also working on the technique itself during hour-long warm-ups as part of each rehearsal.

In looking at Cunningham’s work over time through the four pieces we touched upon, I am hesitant to draw any evolutionary line. These works demonstrate that there is a fair amount of range in his work, and based on that alone I think tracing any sort of development would take a much broader examination of his works. That said, learning excerpts from Canfield, Numbers, Roaratorio, and Pond Way makes for a really interesting comparison-in-motion. In all of the works, the presence of Cunningham technique is unavoidable – and thank goodness we got to work with the technique as much as we did! There is a strength of balance and an awareness of shape, line, and rhythm that runs through each piece. However, these four works show these fundamental principles being used to create naturalistic, moving landscapes (Pond Way), interactive, indeterminate games (Canfield), and so on. Although the works do not have a story to tell, each carries with it a sense of mood, and even within the larger structure individual sections carry their own little atmospheres, changing the shape of the energy onstage almost tangibly as dancers enter to begin sprightly jigs or meditative “shiftings” in Roaratorio. The use of a certain shape, rhythm, or even indeterminate structure does not in and of itself create this sense of mood, but rather the combination of all of these elements – and in the snippets of work we have learned, it is amazing how many different ways Cunningham uses his building blocks of shape, rhythm, and structure.

As a brief and unrelated aside, we have now rehearsed with music several times in order to prepare for the performance and adjust to dancing our own rhythms while hearing something else. In general this wasn’t really much of an adjustment at all. As expected, the music and the dancing function in their own realms, and it is not particularly challenging to keep track of our own rhythms, especially since we have been working in them for so long now. However, performing our Roaratorio excerpt to a recording of the Cage score yesterday I encountered a bit of a surprise. Running under the various other sounds in the score was a clearly discernible tune used in Irish step-dancing. The way that Irish step-dancing is performed to Irish music is extremely regimented rhythmically, and in learning Irish dance one spends an enormous amount of time in the studio listening to music and waiting for the right bar of music on which to start – whether one is performing for the teachers or simply practicing in the background. It took a lot of effort on my part not to get sucked in to that mode of listening to the music – listening to it intently and waiting for the right bar. Certainly I wasn’t going to cue my movement off of it, but the effort was to avoid the level of distraction from the Cunningham work that would arise if I allowed myself to run through my Irish dance steps in my head. A fascinating surprise! It makes me glad we had a chance to rehearse with the score at least once rather than having the score and the work put together during the performance itself.