“It’s when dancing gets awkward that it starts to get interesting.” — Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham and I go way back. To be clear, I never met him, but my mother introduced me to this towering pioneer of modern dance through performances in New York. As is the case for many avid dance fans, his iconoclastic work is integral to the way I view dance. I jumped at any chance to see his company perform.
My last opportunity was at Jacob’s Pillow in 2009; I had tickets for opening night, but my beloved corgi Hobbes was sick, and I was unable to exchange my tickets for another night, so I missed it, much to my regret (#priorities). Merce (I think of him as a first-name personage, like Cher or Madonna) was 90 at the time, and frail; he did not accompany his dancers to the Pillow, and the final time he watched his troupe dance was a livestream of that engagement. He died the day of the closing performance, having stipulated that his company disband within two years of his demise, which it did, on New Year’s Eve 2011.
Since then, I’ve been feeling Merce-deprived, so I was glad to see a one-night-only event in this year’s Pillow season announcement: Merce Cunningham, Liz Gerring, Kyle Abraham: Three Duets. And when I took my seat at the Pillow’s magnificent outdoor theater, the Henry J. Leir Stage, I was even more pleased to hear that choreographers Gerring and Abraham (we’re not on a first-name basis…yet) were in attendance to discuss their work after the performance. All this, plus the fact that the unbearable heat and humidity had lifted, in addition to the dissipation of the chance-of-thunderstorms forecast, made for a wonderful evening.
And, of course, the three brief duets. These dances were first presented in 2021, as part of a digital program produced by the Merce Cunningham Trust and Baryshnikov Arts when in-person performances were shut down during the COVID pandemic. The July 12 event at the Pillow was the first time they were performed in front of a live audience.
I’m accustomed to seeing mature dancers perform Cunningham’s choreography, namely dancers from his own troupe, many of whom stayed with the company over time and aged along with Merce (who famously appeared in his own work even after his ankles and feet became somewhat immobile, waddling onstage like Charlie Chaplin on speed). It was refreshing to see young dancers performing Cunninghamesque choreography.
The program also provided another new perspective on Cunningham’s legacy. His troupe was very homogeneous (read “white”), with only four Black dancers in its entire 58-year history. Casting five Black dancers out of six for these three dances inherently made a statement, perhaps lost on younger viewers without awareness of this history, but unmissable and powerful to audience members familiar with 20th century modern dance.
Up first was Landrover, originally choreographed by Merce in 1972 as a large-scale ensemble work, arranged as a duet by former Cunningham dancer Jamie Scott, who teaches technique and repertory for both the Merce Cunningham Trust and Trisha Brown Dance Company. Dancers Jacquelin Harris (an alum of The School at Jacob’s Pillow) and Chalvar Monteiro, both members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, skillfully moved in full Mercian mode, emotionally neutral, clean in line, striking angular poses in angular planes, hitting all the rigid, off-kilter balances and turns with precision, coming into contact for quirky lifts and supports, with the halting movement that enables viewers to appreciate Merce’s offbeat shapes and spatial relationships. Of particular note: a moment when Harris slides slowly and deliberately head first down Monteiro’s back as he stands in a lunge, holding her legs to control her descent.
Next up, Liz Gerring’s piece Dialogue looked like a movement conversation between dancers Cemiyon Barber (another alum of The School at Jacob’s Pillow) and Mariah Anton-Arters. They moved playfully in and out of a lot of floorwork, most notably a move like a rolling plank pose repeated by both dancers. This work incorporated grandiose poses and bravura jumps; in a departure from Merce’s work, the effort to achieve the lofty heights was intentionally evident. There was also a lot of naturalistic running, in contrast to Merce’s stilted locomotion. Gerring, 2015 recipient of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, focuses on abstract dance and cites Merce as a major on her work.
The final piece, MotoRover, by Kyle Abraham (recipient of the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award), represented the greatest departure from Merce’s work, with clever and even poignant references to the original material. As opposed to the skin-tight unitards of the other dances, Tamisha A. Guy and Catherine Kirk wore looser clothing, with a vertical billowing panel of fabric, which accented the more rounded and flowing movement.
Performing in silence, but for the incidental accompaniment of bird song and the hum of traffic on the distant Massachusetts Turnpike, the dancers began by acknowledging each other with a flourish, as in a traditional ballet, and the movement remained graceful throughout. In a poignant moment, Kirk — a member of A.I.M by Kyle Abrahm — moved way to the side of the stage into an off-center backward balance, and when Guy arrived to support her, she was joined by the four other dancers in a moment that brought to mind a trust fall, connoting “We’re all here for you,” or even, “We’re all in this together.” The dance ends with a little street attitude; some struts with the dancers looking at each other, further deconstructing Cunningham’s unconventional conventions.
Joining Abraham, Gerring, and Scott for a post-performance discussion were veteran Cunningham dancer and teacher Patricia Lent, trustee and director of licensing at the Merce Cunningham Trust. With moderator Norton Owen, the Pillow’s director of preservation, the four discussed Merce’s legacy, the choices they made in making their dances, and other elements, including the costumes and the musical accompaniment (or lack thereof).
The panel was brief, as Owen needed to motor down the mountain to Tanglewood, where the Boston Ballet would dance Apollo, choreographed by George Balanchine, accompanied by the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Stravinsky’s score. Earlier that afternoon, I was at Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning, listening to Owen in discussion with Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen about the relationship between Balanchine and Stravinsky, and the nuances of casting Apollo and the muses. Owen was pinch-hitting in this forum; he was a last-minute substitute for Jennifer Homans, dance critic for the New Yorker. Speaking with him that evening at the Pillow, I learned that he was also a fill-in for the Cunningham panel. All this stepping in to help out made for a major driving day for Owen. So here’s a shout-out to Norton Owen — whom I view as the institutional memory of Jacob’s Pillow — for his contributions to dance in the Berkshires and beyond.
All Jacob’s Pillow photos by Christopher Duggan.
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