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HOW TO.... The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will perform “How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run” on the opening night program of C ity Center's Fall for Dance Festival (September 28th). By
Nancy Dalva In
the past year, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company has performed “How
to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run” in, among other cities, Chicago and
Washington D. C., and it is the final work on the opening night program
of the Fall for Dance Festival on September 28th at City Center in New
York. Dance Theatre of Harlem, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company,
STREB, and David Neuman will precede the company on the mixed bill. As
it happens, Mr. Jones is an admirer of Mr. Cunningham’s work, as
is Elizabeth Streb. She was in turn admired early on in her career by
John Cage and Mr. Cunningham—who recommended her work to me in the
early 1980s—so the program makes a certain amount of sense as something
other than a random sampler. Besides, “How To” is the only
work in the Cunningham repertory in which the choreographer himself still
takes a part, and it is nice to think of him being on stage again at City
Center, where his company for so many years performed every spring. At the opening of the work as it currently is presented, Mr. Cunningham is seated at a table to the far left of the stage, on the part called the “apron.” At his right is David Vaughan, in his own original role as one of the narrators of the score, which is a series of vignettes, of varying lengths, each read aloud so as to take up exactly a minute. (Thus some are spoken rapidly, some slowly, some somewhere in between. Sometimes the narrators overlap. The material was drawn by Mr. Cage from his “Stories from Silence,” published by Wesleyan University Press in 1961, and other Cage texts.) To Mr. Cunningham’s left, Mr. Swinston takes up a position, and, just before initiating the movement by emphatically torquing his body, he acknowledges the choreographer. This is not so much a visual exchange as an energy exchange; a current runs between them. It is a potent moment on its own—and was so all along, originally being between Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Cage, launching their separate parts of the work, which are synchronous but not interdependent adventures. If you know the back story, the moment is now more potent still. Continuity, change. The passage of time imposes its own narrative, singular, but universal. That Mr. Swinston is no longer in the first flush of youth—he is in fact somewhat older than Mr. Cunningham was when the work premiered—but is rather an authoritative and magisterial presence in his own right, adds resonance to the performance, and authenticity. The choreographer was forty-six years old when he first danced in “How
To,” and his role has some of the Prospero-like, master-of-the-revels
quality with which he would imbue many of his roles in the following decade—in,
for instance, “Signals” (1970) “Sounddance” (1975)
and “Exchange” (1978). There is, however, none of the quality
of detachment or tragic odd-man-out-ness which would creep in later, during
the 80's, as in “Gallopade” (1981) and “Quartet”
(1981).The overall color of the movement is effervescent. The original
dancers wore practice clothes of their own choosing, and the stage was
stripped of side and back curtains, so that the walls of the theater itself
were the set, and whatever theatrical detritus the curtains had kept hidden
was alluringly revealed to the public. The work is performed with the
same seeming casualness today. While the dancers do not imitate football
players, there is an effect of scrimmaging–that is, of engaging
in some spirited, episodic, yet joint activity with a physical goal. While
it might be said that football has an obvious narrative content–or
at least a narrative thrust—the dance does not, but it is nonetheless
clear that the dancers are up to something. That something is movement
itself. I went to hear Krishnamurti speak. He was Photos: Originally
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