Merce Cunningham Dance Company - City Center, New York, NY

Dance Magazine, July, 1994 by Gus Solomons

The physical precision of Cunningham's dancers has become virtually superhuman. These incredible dancers are uniformly able to perform the most difficult moves the choreographer can devise with the aid of the LifeForms computer program, which he has used for the past few years. With this tool he can create movement his now-recalcitrant body refuses even to approximate, and his superbly well-trained and intelligent dancers translate the unlikely feats of coordination into bone and muscle. It's easy to see why dancers covet a place in this company so highly; the technical challenge of the movement is irresistibly juicy, even though only Michael Cole projects his sheer enjoyment of the dancing. The apparent earnestness of the others is understandable, considering the extreme concentration required to perform such subtly articulated movement with the flawless precision it demands.

The Repertory Understudy Group has spawned strong rookies to fill the several recently vacated company positions. High-stepping Jeannie Steele has yet to find her full stage presence, and Jean Freebury's enthusiasm is still a bit out of control, but China Laudisio dances with softly rounded dynamics and appealing restraint; Cheryl Therrien is centered and mature; and Thomas Caley's unusually fluid, supple legs and feet are spectacular.

CRWDSPCR (computerspeak for Crowd Spacer or Crowds Pacer, the choreographer notes) features quirky coordinations at breakneck speed. Dancers scuftle about in small groups, filling the stage with a bright mosaic of nonstop motion: A quick-step motif ends with a racy pelvic bump; another Pumps arms and legs up and down like berserk toy soldiers. Group passages alternate with lustrous and witty episodes: Glen Rumsey catches Cole's leg-extended as he rotates - and steals a ride that propels him to the opposite corner. Amazing Frederic Gafner does a cluster of leg-tucked jumps like an ecstatic frog. Freebury stretches her arms overhead and twitches a bent leg behind her, in-out, like an animated railway crossing signal. Alan Good distorts his lanky frame with a lateral hip thrust, then springs into a series of magisterial lunges. Later Jenifer Weaver, whose long, gorgeous legs are sheer eloquence, basks on him like an odalisque and peels off with a back walkover. During a rare quiet moment in John King's nifty score - electronic guitar noises that ricochet among speakers - newcomer Banu Ogan is the paragon of stillness and control in a slow-as-melted-butter solo, letting her long torso arch lavishly or rounding it forward over a deep lunge: a Modigliani portrait come to life. Mark Lancaster's vivid costumes divide the dancers' bodies randomly into blocks of bright, off-beat colors.

Breakers, made this year for Boston Ballet [see page 60], is almost sadistically difficult, testing even the nonpareil technique of the Cunningham company. It's hard to imagine that any other troupe could negotiate such intricate articulations and unforgiving balances. Cunningham has slyly coopted some of ballet's conventions: strong diagonal paths, upward focus, lots of leaping, and passages of unison movement calculated to tax the patience of even the most rigorous ballet master.

Robert Swinston's performance of Cunningham's original role in the 1974 Sounddance shows why he is arguably the quintessential Cunningham dancer. From the moment he bursts, spinning, through the center of Lancaster's elaborately draped and puckered golden back curtain for his opening solo until his final swirling exit, he rivets our focus with conficiently relaxed preciseness and drimatic (yes, dramatic) presence: Perhaps more than any of his colleagues Swinston imbues the abstract movement with internal drama, without sacrificing its kinetic purity. And he always seems to capture just the angle, precisely the dynamic, exactly the direction that Cunningham intended.

In his seventy-fifth year Cunningham himself performs only in last year's Enter, his hour-long masterpiece filled with ravishing sculptural moments and infinite spaciousness. But he appears at the close of each evening to bask in standing ovations from packed City Center houses, filled with fans who finally appreciate this dance that has been on the cutting edge for four decades. Cunningham's creative genius continues to produce a staggering quantity of beautiful dances - enough, we hope, to last forever.