Frederic Gafner: carrying on the Cunningham conspiracy - member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company - Interview

Dance Magazine, March, 1996 by Stephen Greco

It's midafternoon in Merce Cunningham's eleventh-floor rehearsal space in the Westbeth building complex in Greenwich Village. As light streams in through arched windows, dancers are running through a section of Points in Space, which is often included in the ninety-minute, never-the-same collages of new and old works known as "Events" which Cunningham's company frequently performs. Presiding over the rehearsal is Chris Komar, one of its leading dancers during the seventies and tighties and now its assistant artistic director; he is installed on a chair facing the dancers, his back to the wall of mirrors.

Seated by himself in the back of the room, near a little grove of potted greenery, is Merce Cunningham. The choreographer appears to be watching the rehearsal in two ways: reflected in the mirrors and from the rear--if there is a rear view of dancing that has been celebrated for, among other things, its unwillingness to favor the very existence of anything resembling a proscenium.

There is no music. The only sounds breaking the silence are those the dancers make: sniffs and pants of varying intensity, foot beats on the floor. Toward the beginning of this section of Points in Space, there is a passage in which one of the male dancers stands upstage left, posing like a statue, while traffic continues to flow around him. This is a part that Komar performed during the work's first season, almost ten years ago, but today it is being danced by a conspicuously handsome young man in a black T-shirt and psychedelically patterned pink-and-blue tights. The young dancer stands there completely focused, buoyant with energy, then exits.

When he returns, it becomes clear that this noble posturing may have been meant as Apollo-like, for now, after a brief solo, he is joined by three ladies who look suspiciously like Muses or Graces. This dancer is so right for such a role, so confident, concentrated, intelligent, and brimming with technique that the amplitude of his dancing goes beyond the physical--it is metaphysical. And this is only a rehearsal.

The dancer's name is Frederic Gafner. He joined Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1991 at age twenty-one, but it was last season when audiences realized how hard it was to take their eyes off him. Frederic's appetite for movement is compelling," says Cunningham, who chose Gafner from the company's understudy program. "His instant-to-instant physical awareness is brilliantly evident in his dancing."

The Points in Space rehearsal is run straight through. At the conclusion, while the others rest and stretch on the sidelines, Komar asks Gafner to repeat a particularly tricky sequence. In this combination of five moves, the dancer starts in arabesque, in releve on his left leg. His left arm is in front, his right arm in back. Then his left leg goes into plie and his right leg bends, making a kind of attitude; his upper body collapses with a twist and curve, both arms now underneath; then everything opens up again, both arms in front. Gafner goes over it again and again as Komar talks him through it. From his perch in back, Cunningham comments quietly. On the whole, communication during rehearsal seems telegraphic, even telepathic. In silence Gafner tries the sequence again a few times. He smiles boyishly when it finally goes better, and the rehearsal moves on.

There is an extra thrill for us who value Points in Space to watch it in rehearsal. Along with being instructed, we are being reassured that it will survive in coming seasons. Dance must renew itself like a conspiracy, passed from the choreographer to a dancer, and to another dancer--or, in this case, from one generation to another, and to another. A weak link or two and the dance is gone, or at least badly damaged.

Gafner is a strong link-one of the strongest the Cunningham company has ever found. Last fall he won a Bessie, a New York Dance and Performance award. The dance community is now buzzing about his embodying "the next generation" of Cunningham dancers, one of those who will bring the choreographer's work into the next millenium.

This buzzing does not exactly please Gafner. "To say you noticed this dancer or that dancer is natural," he says modestly. "But I feel it's wrong to say someone's the best dancer, because it's very personal who we get attracted to, especially in this work. Merce does feature some dancers more than others, but the idea is that everybody's valid and valuable.

"People talk or don't talk, and that's really out of my control," he continues. "I always gave the most I could, from the beginning. Maybe last year I had more to do--bigger parts, maybe. And I felt kind of freer. I was aware I was happy to be in this company. The marvelous chance Merce gives us is to push ourselves. If people are expecting me always to be the best, the spontaneity and taking chances and all that kind of energy will die. So I have to fight that, and think for myself, and concentrate on the continuity of my own work inside Merce's work. Then I'll be able to give whatever is right at the time.'"