Merce Cunningham & Dance Company

ON SUNDAY, May 26, Merce Cunningham and his dance company completed their triumphant eight-show New York season. Five years ago the controversial, perennially avant-garde Cunningham troupe had to scout hard in order to recruit new members; few dancers cared to dance in stark silence, or worse, struggle to maintain their own difficult movement phrasing against the rhythmic and deafening machinations of a John Cage or David Tudor score.

Cunningham's following among spectators was equally uncertain. Unlike either Graham or Limon, he was known only to the relatively small group of hard-core modern dance appreciators. Yet this past Sunday saw the big house of the Brooklyn Academy of Music full of attentive, enthusiastic viewers. And, back home in lower Manhattan Cunningham and his lead dancer, Carolyn Brown, run one of the most active dance schools in the country.

Identifying causes of Cunningham's recent increase in status (other than the fickle heart of the crowd and the waywardness of any vogue) is difficult. Every modern dance viewer is a scholar. Each knows what is and isnot dance even if he has seen little or no purely modern dance. Cunningham, once the depth of the is not, suddenly rises to be the big is. Perhaps his success may be connected with the vociferous dance critic's unending need to exclaim. More probably, the times have simply caught up with Cunningham.

Cunningham's dance does demand a prepared or prewarned audience. Like the abstract artists who design his sets and costumes--Frank Stella, Warhol, and Rauschenberg--and the electronic musicians composing his scores--John Cage, David Tudor, and Earl Brown (husband of Carolyn Brown)--Cunningham explicitly denies traditional unities of the dance.

FOR EXAMPLE, as Calvin Tomkins noted in the May 4 issue of the New Yorker, Cunningham believes that movement and sound function independently in a dance. As John Cage puts it, they merely coincide in Space-Time. So at one premiere night the Cunningham troupe heard the score for the piece for the first time. A dance, according to Cunningham, does not mean anything that can be translated into words or music. It has no explicitly dramatic or psychological content. Particular movements may evoke emotional responses in the audience, but these responses will vary from person to person. Cunningham is interested in movement itself, "the physical image, fleeting or static." Unlike Graham in "Clytemnestra" or Limon in "The Moor's Pavane," he has never dramatized a legend. Yet his dances posses strong mood, an atmosphere that defines verbal presentation, perhaps because of the ambiguity and constant change involved in any Cunningham dance.

Finally, Cunningham believes in the interest-ingness of the ordinary world with its chance patterns of movement. At one point last Sunday, the dancers appeared on stage with street clothes covering their leotards. The stage manager wandered on stage, looking more like a dancer than any of the troupe who were resting on stage in a variety of comfortable "Not Dance" positions. The dancers meandered on and off stage. The bewildered audience was at times presented with no dancers, just the transparent and decorated plastic envelopes of the set, and the rattle of the score. One by one the audience drifted out during the five minutes that ensued. Those who remained applauded wildly as the dancers reappeared, deadpan as ever.

SURPRISE is an essential element in Cunningham's compositions. He switches wildly from movement to movement, from mood to mood, never employing the traditional ABA structure that every beginning choreographer is taught to respect. The result is a fragmented, elusive kind of brilliance which is in great part due to the unusual richness of Cunningham's choreographic vocabulary. So, in his solo, "Collage III," Cunningham lightly explodes from one motion to the next. There are no echoes in the dance. He sculpts random and beautiful moods in the air. For some the experience is wonderful.

The group dances multiply the impact of the method. Each of the dancers has great individuality. Yet the sum of their movements is an ongoing collage of stunning moods, designs, and even, if you're so inclined, ideas. The effect depends on the separateness of the elements. Thus the independence of the score, set, costume and dancers increase awareness and experience instead of negating it.

A special note should be inserted concerning Cunningham's use of the prime dance sin--ugliness. Ugliness often figures in the movements: it is part of experience. The technical competence of this troupe is unsurpassed, hence their awkwardnesses are calculated. They do not want to float like swans or swing like Gower Champion. Cunningham's goal is creating new qualities of experience for his dancers and audiences. His concerts are magnificent events not to be missed.