I’ve studied dance nearly my whole life. I understand well the ways it can
be inscrutable and transcendent. More often than not, the new documentary
reveals how little dance is understood, and the pitfalls of trying to represent
it.
Laila Pedro
Cunningham is a lush
documentary about the legendary choreographer, shot in 3D and overflowing with
cinematic bells and whistles. I’ve watched and studied danced for nearly my
whole life; I understand well the ways in which it can be inscrutable as much
as transcendent. Such is the case with Cunningham: at moments, as in the
gorgeous restaging of Merce Cunningham’s 1958 Summerspace, which features a
pointilist set designed by Robert Rauschenberg, it’s a glimmering gem. More
often than not, it’s a master class in frustration that reveals how little
dance is understood as an art form, and the pitfalls of trying to represent it.
Herewith, 8 notes on showing and thinking about dance:
1) Dance is
difficult to film.
It’s also difficult to notate, write about, and otherwise represent. More
than other mediums, it’s ephemeral and immediate and raw, tied very much to the
moment of performance. What can feel like magic live often loses something
critical in the translation to film.
2) Dance is in chronic poverty.
Cunningham joked that all he, John Cage, and their collaborator Robert
Rauschenberg had in common was “our poverty and our ideas.” An opportunity to
spend real money on it is rarer than rubies, and dancers often spend tremendous
amounts of money on training and rehearsal space for usually meager
compensation. Do not make a film about filming dance. Make a film about dance
Merce Cunningham in Cunningham, a Magnolia Pictures release, © Robert
Rutledge
3) Bodies are as
smart as minds.
Dance, to paraphrase George Balanchine, is not a physical but a moral
undertaking. Through an aestheticized physical vocabulary, it refracts a vision
of the world. To responsibly describe a dance, you must first understand the
worldview that made it. In Cunningham’s case, it was spare, elegant, devoid of
editorializing affect; it was serious, never gaudy. In Cunningham we often get
gaudy, rarely serious. We see the money, less the choreography.
4) Study the dance you are showing.
Cunningham was a voluble speaker and an elegant writer. Take a Cunningham technique dance class, if
you are able to, to learn it through your own body; this is the dance
equivalent of being in a room with an artwork, rather than looking at it on a
computer screen, as is now so often the case. In the film, Cunningham is shown
describing his technique as a modern-dance torso on top of ballet legs. His
framing is pithy and clear, but there are other elements that render his style
striking, and it’s the job of scholars and dance historians to articulate these
and of documentarians to visualize them.
In Cunningham’s choreography, strikingly curved spines and spiraling torsos
evince the emotional expressiveness of Martha Graham’s legacy. Legs are
frequently turned out and feet stretched and pointed like ballet dancers’. To
these recognizable physical vocabularies Cunningham added startling weight
shifts and surprising directional changes, creating a sense of staggering
physical awareness edging into pure aesthetics. It provides the body the
potential to move artfully, intentionally, in any direction at any moment.
Cunningham’s work had a deep philosophical relationship to time. Setting dances
by stopwatch was not a neat physical trick, as it’s portrayed in the film — it
was a visionary reimagining of the body.
Alla Kovgan, the filmmaker, has done extensive research on Cunningham and
holds his work in high regard. But I wouldn’t know it from how infrequently the
film lingers on the details of the body; it rarely highlights the ways in which
he restructured and reoriented its movements so the impossible became seemingly
effortless, impossibly modern.
5) Take collaboration seriously.
Cunningham’s partner in life and art was John Cage, one of the great
musical minds of the 20th century. Cage appears in the film, wry yet warm, like
Cunningham himself, with his oft-quoted aphorism, “I have nothing to say and I
am saying it.” But Cage was also a sophisticated music theorist, a refined
philosopher, and an unrivaled innovator. His grindings and silences were not
one-off provcations but rigorous explorations of the nature of sound and music.
In the film there’s a brief nod to the choreographic philosophy of separating
the music from the dance. What does this imply about the close connection between music and
dance? How was this relationship different from others formed amid the hotbed
of creative activity that also sprouted Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown?
Rauschenberg is there, until he isn’t. How did they work together? Why? The
film answers none of these questions.
A scene from
Cunningham, a Magnolia Pictures release, © Mko Malkshasyan
6) Emphasize the structure of the dance, not the medium of the film.
There’s a beautiful duet, set at the edge of a pond. We get some shining
seconds of what makes watching dance so special — the way the dancers’ breath
expands their ribs, the absolute marvel of their bodies situated in this way,
moving in sequence — before the camera pulls back for an excessive lingering
shot of the surface of the pond. The dancers fall out of focus and then
entirely, unbelievably out of view. The wonder of water shot in 3D became the
subject and we lost the dance.
7) Trust the movement/show the movement.
Cunningham doesn’t require split screens or 3D or dramatic lighting. His
concern was the body and the art it made. The subtleties of a flicked wrist
here, an impossibly undulating bicep there, a wiggling toe that is grave and
silly in equal measure — these are lost in this baroque production. The film
features an extraordinary group of dancers restaging the choreographer’s work
in the present alongside an extraordinary gathering of archival content made at
the time. Too often, the cinematic flourishes make it impossible to see
either.
A scene from
Cunningham, a Magnolia Pictures release, © Martin Miseré
8) Understand the
duty of history.
The memory of dance
lives mostly in the bodies of dancers. Talk more with people who were there,
and not just about Merce’s personality or their feelings but about the
choreography itself. What does it feel like to learn that technique? How would
you teach it? How does it sit in your body, and how does it change as you age?
Many former dancers become teachers not only because of the lack of
opportunities later in life, but because they are the repositories of
knowledge.
Remember always, in
the words of dance historian Sally Sommer: “You are passing on this ephemeral
and fragile thing that is an idea that lives only at the moment that it is
performed and then it’s gone. It’s like you’re passing on air.”
https://hyperallergic.com/532814/a-master-class-in-frustration-notes-from-a-dancer-on-cunningham/
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario