Ineluctable Modality

YOU NEED NOT turn beyond the first photograph in this book to understand that cameraman James Klosty could not possibly express more about choreographer Merce Cunningham than that he's an enigma. That first photograph silhouettes Cunningham--turned from the waist, arms stretched overhead, legs rooted apart--like a Klee stick figure, or a Giacometti spider-thin nude, or maybe a twentieth-century version of the Renaissance icon: man as the measure of all things.

Merce Cunningham, once a principle dancer in Martha Graham's company, broke away from his mentor in the late forties to form his own dance troupe in New York. At the same time Cunningham was involved in the artistic experiments at Black Mountain College, taking part in the first "happening" along with composer John Cage and working alongside writers such as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley (Olson once composed a prose choreography for Cunningham called "Apollonius of Tyana."). Cunningham is known for using chance methods in his choreography, even to the point where the flip of a coin would determine the next movement in a dance.

Merce Cunningham, a collection of photographs and eclectic writings on the choreographer, attempts to get at Cunningham's elusive spirit. Yet the pages of photographs detailing Cunningham's features reveal no more than Klosty's first blurred picture, nor do the accompanying pieces penned by members of Cunningham's company. Almost all fifteen contributors cut short their reflections with the observation that Cunningham is a very private and inscrutable human being.

John Cage, painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and others pay special homage to Cunningham, attempting to understand him as a teacher, performer, collaborator and creator. They know in their bones--though Klosty is the only one so bold as to say so--that the gathering of artists, musicians and dancers around Cunningham in the fifties was as significant a group in the history of the arts as was Bloomsbury or Gertrude Stein's "charmed circle." After the second World War, the arts in New York took on a vitality and strength which Cunningham and his followers helped to create. And it is with this realization that a few of the fifteen delve into the complexities of the man and the myth, and succeed in cutting sharp reliefs of Cunningham. Others offer only a few sentences and warm sentiments.

Carolyn Brown, Cunningham dancer for twenty years, writes with the most perspective and the most acceptance. She admits how difficult it is to work under Cunningham's aloofness, although she's thankful that his hands-off attitude forces his dancers to be "self-disciplined, self-critical, and self-moving." She describes how Cunningham adheres to John Cage's belief in rejecting all forms of subservience, and sympathizes with his uneasiness at shouldering responsibility for company members' spirits.

Brown argues against the popular conception of Cunningham's dance as having no meaning, a subject none of the other writers touch. Acknowledging that Cunningham leaves few clues about what he's doing, she nonetheless insists that "his own dancing is suffused with mystery, poetry and madness--expressive of root emotions, generous yet often frightening in their nakedness." She points to Cunningham's use of the dancer's internal sense of rhythm, explaining that his practice of rehearsing a piece by timing it over and over with a stopwatch is far from mechanical, as is often charged.

Despite her insights Brown never does enter Cunningham's private world. She knows he never will reveal certain sides of himself and respectfully leaves him in his studio:

There, dressed either in ragged practice clothes or mechanic's coveralls, he works: he gives himself a class, waters his plants, choreographs new material, types a letter in an attempt to catch up on a staggering back load of correspondence, watches a ship move up the river, strips and dances for pleasure, eats a lunch of cheese and nuts and fruit and yogurt, while he reads a book about apes or bees or the structure of a leaf, plays his radio, plans his technique class, makes a cup of coffee, reviews his notes on a dance to be revived, and for a few hours, if he's lucky enough to go undisturbed...Merce putters blissfully and enjoys the small clutter of activities which make him whole.

Taken one by one, the remaining essays seem rather thin. Only Brown's essay can fill in their background. Robert Rauschenberg contributes a few clipped comments, refusing to let his years as Cunningham's manager and designer "be short-changed by memory or two-dimensional facts." His words seem flip until Brown's narrative tells how exciting was his time with the company and how sad and little-discussed his leaving. Similarly, former manager Lewis Lloyd's hard-headed opinions on how to run a company sound less obstreperous after Brown details Cunningham's peculiar brand of leadership.

Some of the writers eschew straightforward prose for witty, self-consciously absurd jottings that don't give as much insight into Cunningham as into the ambience surrounding him. In "Where Are We Eating? And What Are We Eating?" John Cage catalogs the company's favorite haunts from Brownsville to Bombay. A typical snippet:

We'd been on one train from Warsaw to West Germany, our theatre luggage on another which hadn't arrived. No way to get information from railway authorities in East Berlin. A day passed. Consulted I Ching. Oracle said: Don't worry; relax and feast. While we were stuffing ourselves, news came that our trunks had just arrived.

Dancer Douglas Dunn writes a poem similar to R.D. Laing's "Knots" by listing what seem to be all the linguistic combinations possible with "dancing," "talking," and the verb "to be." It ends:

Dancing is Dancing

Talking is Talking

Dunn's point is one that photographer/editor Klosty takes seriously. Klosty is unsure if words or photographs can express much significant about Cunningham, and he says so in his introduction (which makes one wonder why he published the book in the first place). He skirts the risk of coffee-table gloss only by possessing enough sense to include Caroyn Brown's reminiscences; even so, the substance in Merce Cunningham is outweighed by its shine.