Word: cunningham
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...arts in one hall." He was standing in the lobby of Manhattan's off-Broadway Phoenix Theater, surrounded by an intermission crowd of beards, ponytails and beatminks. The occasion: an evening of modern dance presented by the most consistently daring experimenter in the field-Dancer-Choreographer Merce Cunningham...
Since he left the Martha Graham company 14 years ago, Merce Cunningham has pursued a labyrinthine path extravagantly admired by his followers but often bewilderingly obscure to uninitiated spectators. In Cunningham's world, disembodied arms may project from behind curtains to serve as coat racks, the dancers may suddenly suspend all motion to stand fiercely washing their hands, the hero, dressed in a multi-colored coat, may roll about grunting like a pig or baying like a hound...
Motion & Stillness. On last week's program the two principal pieces, both choreographed by Cunningham, were Summer-space and Antic Meet, set to music by two modernists-Morton Feldman, 35, and John Cage, 47. The first, described as "a lyric dance," was an impressionistic work evoking the shimmering heat of summer, the play of light and shade. It was danced before a pointillistic backdrop of blue and green, and the dancers wore similarly dappled costumes (the spots were sprayed on with a paint gun), which permitted them to disappear into and emerge from the scenery as if they were...
Antic Meet, set to squeaking, creaking, honking music conducted by Composer Cage himself, was mostly satirical-a spoof of social conventions, sports, the modern dance itself. At one point Cunningham pulled on and off a multisleeved sweater in a pointed jab at Martha Graham's fondness for dressing and undressing while dancing. At another he appeared in white coveralls and went through a marvelously loose-limbed parody of vaudeville-style dancing, with broad suggestions of Fred Astaire. The piece contained few outright ballet laughs, but it was distinguished by the clean, sculptural style that is the mark of Cunningham...
With only each other to treat savagely, they still do a consummate job. In the title story, fat, foolish Rita Cunningham marries her dead husband's stepbrother, a slim, sardonic man with a tomcat's morals and the face of a ''boy film-star." The end is total humiliation for Rita. Women, generally, have a bad time. Our Bovary tells of Sonia Smith, who looks like a dahlia, "large, top-heavy, gorgeous," and who gets satisfaction neither from her small husband nor her stiflingly small home town. South African Author Gordimer, 35, who is a tiny...