Choreographer Merce Cunningham, 'the most influential andimportant contemporary figure in dance', is in Ireland to open International Dance Festival Ireland. He talks to Michael Seaver
Dance exists in the present. Motion in time and space passes before our eyes and disappears again. Sure, some images burn into our mind becoming "after-images" and some movements connect with us at a visceral and physical level that we can recall later, but dance exists in the here and now. And no-one's dances exist more in the present than Merce Cunningham's.
In Ireland to open the programme of International Dance Festival Ireland, Cunningham is the most influential and important contemporary figure in dance at present. With a career that has spanned over 50 years, having produced many classic works, inspired other key figures in dance and developed new thinking in the movement arts, Cunningham remains focused on the present. Forget yesterday's glorious achievements, just make more dances today.
At 82, and faced with yet another interview, he could easily trot out lines about old works and their historical importance, but conversation constantly steers towards the present, his newest work and the future that work is charting for him. His animated conversations on the past are never self-important, merely an account of the journey he has taken to where he is now.
Underlying his work, and probably his life, is his use of chance operations. The roll of a dice or the I-Ching not only dictates the assembly of his own choreography, but also determines how he collaborates with other artists, many of whom are as influential in their own disciplines.
Figures such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Robert Rauschenburg and Andy Warhol have all worked with Cunningham, united in a desire to reject modern art's self-rationalising and to make art that would deliberately not make sense.
Usually the collaborators worked in isolation and the first time that the elements of the performance came together was the opening night.
"Summerspace [which will be performed in Dublin] was one of the first pieces to use chance operation," recalls Cunningham. "I remember Morton Feldman, who was very sure of himself, telling me how he met friends in New York who asked him what he was doing. He explained how he was writing music for a dance for Merce Cunningham and that I was working up in Connecticut and Bob Rauschenburg was doing the décor and he was working in South Carolina. When the friend asked how this could possibly work, Morton said, 'Well, it's like your daughter was getting married and was told that her wedding dress wouldn't arrive until the day of the wedding . . . but it's a Dior!'"
Laughing at Feldman's charming arrogance, which contrasts with his own modesty, Cunningham, nevertheless, points to the essence of the success of these collaborations - the strength of the brilliant individual artistic contributions. Audiences in Dublin this week will see silver pillows by Warhol in Rainforest, probably Cunningham's most popular work, and hear music by John Cage in Interscape. Even nowadays, working with contemporary artists such as Terry Winters, Charles Long or Gavin Bryars is important.
"I will always work with contemporary artists. It's essential because we live in the same time so we might see the same way. That's not to say that we have to do exactly the same thing, but we should share the same spirit."
The independence of the artforms, co-existing on stage, reinforces this sense of "present-ness" in Cunningham's choreography. Each performance is different, because music and dance don't necessarily need to coincide.
The 1999 work BIPED brings the new element of computer motion capture. "I've worked for a number of years with Lifeforms, a computer programme that lets you arrange dancers on a grid on the screen. When it was at an early stage the developers approached me and asked if I would be interested in using it. So I got a computer with the programme and, after a few disasters with everything crashing, I began to see movement in a new way. I now use it all the time, before beginning a new piece to try out ideas, or during rehearsals when the dancers have gone on a break.
"Recently, Paul \ and Shelly \ came along with motion capture, a way of capturing movement on screen and for me another way of using computers. They asked me to make a number of short phrases with two dancers who wore these sensors on their joints. What goes on the computer are these specific parts of the body, which are moving of course. That's the first computer image, but they can then take that and change it in, as far as I can see, unlimited ways, and these images form part of the piece. They then asked me to put these different sections in order, which I did . . . by chance operations, and these different sections are projected on a gauze screen during the dance."
BIPED will need the wide stage space that the Abbey offers and Cunningham relishes the idea of reclaiming the National Theatre for dance, long absent from its stage. But any discussion on the Irish literary tradition keeps coming back to James Joyce, a huge influence in his work. At least four titles of dances come from Joyce - In the name of the Holocaust, Tossed as it is Untroubled, Sounddance and Roaratorio - and issues of fragmentation, collage and simultaneity that exist in modern literature are also to be found in Cunningham's works.
"I even performed in a radio play by John \ where Satie, Duchamp and Joyce meet. It's a fascinating group to stick together, but for me Joyce is such an important figure". (This piece was staged in Dublin last year as a co-production with the Dublin Fringe Festival.)
Commentators, such as the US critic Nancy Dalva, place Cunningham squarely within the Joycean tradition, with the importance of the everyday and epiphany. As Cunningham himself says: "I have many references, many images, so in that sense I have no images. This is because I could just as well substitute one image for another, in the Joycean sense of there being not a symbol but multiple symbols. One thing can build on another, or you can suddenly have something - the same thing - being something else. That seems to me the way life is anyway."
All this prompts the question of how he places his work and its significance within dance? Interestingly it draws the only awkward silence in the interview.
"I don't think that way," he says, eventually, with genuine modesty. "We show our works more now. They ask for them so we bring them!"
Although he is awkward when talking about his power of influence, the facts speak for themselves. Ex-dancers with the company such as Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Karol Armitage and Paul Taylor have all exerted their own important influence on dance. Cunningham himself shares the lineage of Martha Graham, Denis Shawn and Isadora Duncan, "mutant artists all", as Steve Paxton memorably described them.
BUT the legacy of his ideas still prevails. "I think our ideas have been taken by other people, but used in their way, not mine. The whole thing of not demanding that the music support the dance or frame it in any particular way, or that the décor in some way contribute in a logical way, as opposed to an illogical way. That has changed. But we didn't necessarily think up those ideas. They were around in the atmosphere and I think that many things have contributed to that.
"The whole way that television presents things, the fact that you can change it by switching channels, so that you don't have a logical continuity. You can break it up, or it breaks itself up, I think that's all part of our thinking now. We are more visually articulate these days and we can see images as a language. I'm sure that's all down to television."
As metaphors go, it's probably close to perfect. The immediacy of flicking a remote control, creating different states of "presentness" by chance finds perfect resonance in the works, ideas and life of Merce Cunningham.
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company opens the International Dance Festival Ireland at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, this Wednesday at 8 p.m. The festival runs until May 26th in venues around Dublin. Booking at 01-8787222. Information from: 01-6790524 and on www.dancefestivalireland.ie
