sarma

One of the things that makes seeing a concert of dances by Merce Cunningham such a great experience is his air of absolute assurance as a creator. You feel that he knows exactly what he is and what he is doing. And, of course, he does it brilliantly. For me, going to see his work - as I did last Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music - is a celebration.

His creations are classically contained, but never static. In fact, they're almost constantly shifting. It's as if his main purpose is to distill in dance the forms of growth and change in living things. For the most part, each dancer moves in a pattern different from any of the others. When their paths converge or their bodies impinge on each other it can be by chance, or by deliberate choice, or the result of an inevitable path. Dancers roll into others and set them off in motion. It's like Hume's billiard balls: you actually see only the activity, but you infer cause and effect. As a matter of fact, you infer many things from a Cunningham dance, based on your own conditioning or your mood of the moment. Cunningham creates a place where people move beautifully; he shows you forms and relationships; he may also set a predominant atmosphere through the movement he chooses, light, sound, and decor. The specific emotional colors are added by you, the audience, if you choose. You can notice certain things more than others. You can watch any or all of his fine dancers, each one invidivual in appearance and character and approach. He himself, with his taut, alert air, can seem one of the gang, a gentle manipulator, or the victim of his own creation (as he does in Place).

Scramble was Toshi Ichiyanagi's score - sounds like ripping and static. And Frank Stella has created a marvelous environment for it - narrow colored pieces of canvas, each stretched between two supports. They look a little like the backs of giant directors' chairs. The lowest is the longest and vice versa. They are moved about, added, or eliminated to change the shape of the dancing area. The performers can disappear behind the lowest as if sinking under a wave. At moments the dance has an aura of discovery, at moments one of ritual. The dancers appear easy, relaxed-like friends engaging in some pleasurable activity together. Sometimes they wait for a leader's signal to begin something. Certain ones leave; as if a vacuum has been set up, others flow in. The movement is sometimes balletic, sometimes derived from modern dance, sometimes pure Merce with crazy little steps that shoot limbs in all directions at incredible speeds. The only thing I didn't love about Scramble was Toshi Ichiyanagi's score sounds like ripping and static so loud that they gripped my head in a vise. This element was an odd contrast to the gentleness of the dancers and almost made the dance appear to be taking place on the brink of disaster. Wouldn't it be nice if we had earlids?

Gordon Mumma's better, but equally cruel, score works perfectly for Place" - one of the best dances I've ever seen. The whole mood is ominous. Part of this is due to the atmosphere that Beverly Emmons has created with rectangles of lattice and newspapers hanging at the back of the stage, also with two Japanese-style lanterns that Cunningham carefully trains on the dancers at one point. The shadows these lanterns cast are somehow menacing, although beautiful, like Miss Emmons's use of the stage lighting and the plastic dresses she has designed for the girls, which glitter harshly as if wet. Ominous, too, the way Cunningham stalks warily about, the sudden outbursts of violently fast movement, the odd positions couples find themselves in, the way the dancers in a certain section must move only one at a time to get where they are going. The end is really frightening with Cunningham thrashing along the floor, his lower body in a long plastic bag. Is he trying to get in or out? Finally he rolls upstage and disappears. Either he has left the "place" or been absorbed into it.

The program ended happily with How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run. While John Cage, lubricated with champagne, read some of the hilarious little entries in his memoirs, the dancers bounded and sprinted with only occasional moments of calm. They seemed surprised and delighted to find each other on the stage. It was the exuberant momentum of the dance and not the grimy IRT at all that swept us laughing from Brooklyn to Manhattan.