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.

Now, picture this regal, willowy, dark-eyed six-footer at age five, bursting forth from behind his bedroom window curtain and "jumping around" to recordings he'd purloined from his older brother--just one of the little dance shows he liked to put on for himself and an occasional playmate. His mother said, "You've really got rhythm!"

In high school Caley was not interested in the sports and beer drinking that preoccupied his peers. His best friend growing up wanted to be a writer, and when she went away to Interlochen Arts Academy in her sophomore year, he was deeply unhappy. In their constant phone conversations she encouraged him to join her at the school. His father, an aspiring sculptor and architect before taking over his family's insurance business, encouraged his son's artistic pursuits. At age fifteen he was allowed to leave home and attend Interlochen.

"I really didn't know exactly what I was going to go for," he says. "Then suddenly--what made up my mind I don't know--I was auditioning for dance, and it worked out. After Interlochen I still wasn't sure this was what I wanted to devote my life to; I wasn't sure that dancing could be a `real career,' but a bunch of us went off to SUNY-Purchase together. That's where my real training began."

At Purchase he focused first on ballet, since he was already familiar with it: "The teachers mostly ignored me. Because I could mimic anything, even though I had no idea what I was really doing, I learned by copying what the others did." In Graham class he was placed in the most advanced group, although he'd had no previous exposure to the technique. With amusement he recalls his bafflement. His only prior taste of contemporary dance had been jazz and a hybrid, amorphous modern style at Interlochen. Because of his kinetic aptitude and perfect body form, his previous teachers had often assumed that he understood what he was doing, technically, far more than he did.

"I thought [Graham technique] was beautiful," he recalls, "although I didn't relate to the kind of emotion attached to it. I'm not an angry person, and to harbor all that just to create the technique was a bit unreal to me. But the structure of the technique is beautiful."

The couple of years away from home before he arrived at college gave him a maturity many of his classmates lacked. He was ready to focus: "I was praised for doing things well in ballet, but it never connected for me. I felt like a puppy or a colt. Limbs were moving, but I had no idea how they got there." He soaked up new dance material like a sponge, despite occasional admonitions from impatient Graham instructors that he was holding the group back. Nonetheless, Caley enjoyed performing choreography by the SUNY-Purchase faculty, including Cunningham alumnus Neil Greenberg. After graduation he went to the Cunningham Studio in New York City.

Although he seems a natural Cunningham dancer, with perfect turnout, flexible hips, and spectacularly arching feet, Caley admits that he resisted the I Cunningham method at first. "I was duplicating superficial ideas about what Cunningham style was, but I disagreed with the timing--especially of the jumping." He felt he'd learned to dance at Purchase in a way that worked for him, and he was hesitant to give it up.