2 Cunningham dancers - Merce Cunningham Dance Company dancers Derry Swan and Thomas Caley - Cover Story - Interview

Dance Magazine, Oct, 1997 by Bill Deresiewicz, Gus Solomons, Jr.

"You have to just hang around and work," Lent says. "I didn't get the impression that Derry had a whole lot of confidence about her prospects, which was shocking to me because she seemed so obviously right for the company. She's a tall woman who didn't try to act small. And she has a very beautiful, luscious quality of movement. You can't teach that--you can't really even learn it. It's just an extension of your personality."

Swan spent her two months as an understudy frantically learning steps. The most difficult passage in Weaver's repertory turned out to be a little phrase that occurs right at the beginning of Ocean, Cunningham's immensely difficult ninety-minute masterpiece. Frederic Gafner, the company's outstanding male dancer, performs a solo; then the woman comes out for a solo of her own. Almost immediately, with her torso and free leg horizontal to the floor, she must releve and promenade, without preparation, half a turn around, then half a turn back. "I've tried it a hundred times," Swan said during the weeks she was learning the move, "and I've done it twice--both times with nobody watching."

Work with the company began on March 4. Class ended, rehearsal began, and Cunningham simply said, in his understated way, "Ocean, first solo." Gafner danced, then it was Swan's turn. "It was a mess," she says, "and I knew it would be, and everyone else knew it would be, but still--the first thing I ever have to do is go out by myself with everyone watching." Weaver gave some corrections, then Swan danced the solo again, considerably better. "It was hard," she recalled soon after. "The first few days, especially, I was so scared to be in rehearsal with these amazing dancers, and have me be the focus of attention, and everything having to stop every time I didn't know something. But it was exciting, too, and when things went well I felt really good. But it was hard."

The rest of the company helped ease the transition. "People were really welcoming and patient and helpful," she says, "and just nice and encouraging. I hadn't really been friends with them before joining, but right away, the day I got my contract, a few of them took me out for a celebratory drink. They told funny stories about all the times they'd messed up--missing entrances and things like that. It's a really close-knit company."

Her debut with the company was to be in Berkeley in April in a performance of Ocean. She still had trouble with that opening solo. "I walked around cursing for a while, but then I just told myself to shut up, because you really can't do anything about it. It's over, move on, and hopefully the next time it'll work." In the end, the performance was fun--"a surprising amount of fun." Afterward, though, the four months of accumulated anxiety caught up with her: "I started to feel awful about everything. Like, `Why am I here? What am I doing?' I was fantasizing that maybe Jenifer would want her place back, because she can have it, because I can't deal with feeling like this all the time." Once again, she regained her focus through class. As for the releve phrase from the opening solo, Cunningham showed her an easier way to do it--the way that Weaver had actually done it herself. "There's perfection," Swan said at the time, "and then there's what really happens. Besides, it doesn't matter to Merce. He likes to see people try, whether or not you succeed."