xtcian

8/2/03 Columbia County, NY (1

8/2/03 Columbia County, NY (1 week until wedding)

We saw the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Jacob's Pillow tonight, arguably the best place to see modern dance in the world outside of the ADF in Durham, North Carolina. To me, modern dance joins sculpture as the two art forms I know least about, but a thorough reading of Cunningham's ethos is fascinating, if not frustrating.

MC went to school with the composer John Cage (infamous for his 4'33" of silence), and both were heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, and rejected popular notions about what a dance or a piece of music should be. After dicking around with Martha Graham in the 1930s, Cunningham jettisoned the idea that dance should tell a story, or even have a specific emotion attached to it. The dances would start even before the curtain would rise, and there was no nod to a "beginning," "middle," or "end." Like the Buddhists say, you are simply in the moment, and there is no past or future.

John Cage was saying something similar with 4'33", when he brought a pianist onstage and subjected the audience with four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. The ambient noise - the rustling of programs, the occasional sneeze - was the real "piece." Likewise, tonight's performance featured a musician who could not see the dancers and the dancers could not see him. Occasionally, there would be no music for a few minutes, and thus we heard the gulping breaths of dancers, feet hitting the floor, etc. - and that was the "piece." Any time the music seemed to be working in confluence with the dance, you reminded yourself that it was all luck.

My brother Kent does a lot of work like this, taking random sound loops and musical algorithms and putting them together until something incredible happens. He would have liked tonight's music, too - a hodgepodge of keyboard noises, sine waves and the occasional violin scraping.

Yes, but was the performance any fun?

No, it was boring as hell. The music made Tessa and her niece want to claw their faces off, and the motions of the dancers, while beautiful, could occasionally lapse into "I seen them do this already." The whole concert was a test of endurance for both us and the performers. And 75 minutes straight is a long time to sit in that kind of heat. But occasionally you need a total academic experience that pushes you to the limits of your idea tolerance.

That said, I am now craving the sight of some breakdancers spinning on their head while Kurtis Blow plays on a jambox.