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.

Merce's taciturn way of teaching gives dancers no overt clues about how to accomplish his difficult oblique balances, lightning-fast jumping combinations, and footwork patterns that boggle the memory. I asked Caley what had helped him achieve his breakthrough.

"I guess it was the struggle," he says. "If you're long and flexible, strength is hard to get. That was the hardest thing for me: a sense of keeping things connected within my center."

The wall came down after about a year of stubbornness and frustration at the Cunningham studio: "Why don't you give this a fair chance? I said to myself. Of course, then I realized that you don't give up anything; you just add more. That's when I told Chris [Komar] I really would like to work there. All the information I'd been getting finally accumulated, and all of a sudden it began to make sense. Cunningham's rhythm is like no one else's, and that's what makes his work so different."

Cunningham dancers over the years have often garnered a reputation for the austerity of their performing demeanors. But lately, there's more overt collegiality in the dancing. The extraordinary confidence and calm presence Caley brings to Cunningham's abstraction made me curious about his mental process while performing. Some Cunningham dancers create little narratives to animate the steps for themselves, especially during technically treacherous movement passages, when some distraction can be helpful in easing the tension of intense concentration.

"I don't make up any plot line, per se," Caley says. "I dance from moment to moment. My story line is about connecting with the other dancers. When I'm technically overchallenged--which happens--that makes me more reserved, and I look toward a time I can relax and go further. If I'm not there yet, I just say, Okay, you'll get there.

"Right now, we're all about the same age and friendly with each other, and we're not told not to show that onstage. I don't want to build a wall around myself onstage; I want to draw people in. I don't believe I have to entertain, either, but I look for the moments where I can find freedom. Otherwise you're just taking one long class onstage with people watching--and paying!"

Is there dancemaking in his future? Choreography intimidated him in college, Caley says. He felt that he needed to know more technically before daring to make dances of his own. He's not satisfied by dances that are just displays of beautiful technical movement, declaring with typical insight, "My generation doesn't take enough time to explore; they just want an end result. Good or bad, who cares? That doesn't interest me. My classmates were turning out lots of dances. But I think you can learn so much more if you take longer to find out what your work is about."

He enjoys many non-Western forms of dance. Though he doesn't feel that he could perform them, they are influences: "I haven't found my voice yet, but I'm starting the process of exploring."

And what about dancing life after Cunningham? Since Caley is not interested in merely preserving the repertory as a museum legacy after Cunningham is no longer at the helm, he says that he'll move on to other work. But the inveterate performer definitely wants to continue dancing: "Pine Bausch's work is interesting. Something completely different from Merce."