Review: Cunningham Forever (BIPED & Beach Birds), Sadler’s Wells

If you’re reading this, I assume you are a dance head, like myself, and so the shadow of Merce Cunningham looms large. If not, the American choreographer and dancer dominated the 20th century with his eponymous company, reaching the grand age of 90 and making work almost until then. A fruitful longtime collaboration with composer John Cage among many, many other artists meant his work vaulted genres like stepping stones. I simply do not have the word limit to surmise a career of almost 50 years, but after leaving the Martha Graham Company in 1944 Cunningham routinely shocked and expanded the dance world – from using Chinese Cleromancy (randomness) in his pieces to asserting that music and dance should not be intentionally coordinated. His works are challenging but fascinating philosophical explorations. Not only a big but a very clever cheese.

Choosing two of his later works, we get a glimpse of Cunningham at his most experienced and most uninterested in coddling the audience. 1999’s BIPED finishes off the night with sci-fi swish and swagger. Gavin Bryars’ live soundtrack sirens and clangs, and the dancers swivel onstage in Suzanne Gallo’s getups that look like something you would wear to Gatecrasher in the 90s: but maybe that’s showing my age? Think Star Trek metallic, but pearl-clutchingly short and tight.

There are stilted, swinging turns and some nice group and solos work. But the most gripping element is the showcasing of Cunningham’s early adoption of digital integration in collaboration with Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshikar. A cloth stretched across the whole stage, and 70 programmed routines are projected over the jerking movements of the pearlescent dancers. The holograms are comprised of brush strokes and collections of white balls that string together in vaguely humaniform. Sometimes digital giants stomping around the tiny onstage dancers, they are unlimited by the physical plane, darting between the ever-moving shafts of light, disappearing and reappearing at will. Very ghost in the machine.

The first act is the more mannered 1991 Beach Birds. Cage’s minimal piano plonking and rainstick give very little to the dancers, as intended by the couple’s artistic manifesto. Marsha Skinner’s lighting has various oceanic washes of colour over a back wall and in front, dressed a little like sexually provocative (now extinct) Great Auks, are our dancers. If you haven’t seen one have a Google, they are hilarious. Think a large penguin on steroids. The flightiness and spontaneity of the flock of waders is captured precisely by Cunningham and assistant choreographer Carol Teitelbaum. Despite the flapping wings and Great Grebe-style mating ritual, the piece proves a little uninteresting to watch unless you’re a hungry hawk, and in that case, I bet you’d be salivating. 

Both are a testament to Cunningham’s genius and undaunted work ethic but a mouthful for anyone unmeshed in the dance world. On second thoughts, it’s difficult for those of us that are. The experimental and deeply philosophical may be cerebrally stimulating but is at times visually bland. However, deconstructing why we have these knee-jerk reactions to the abstract is the reason his work continues to be put on, fracturing around theatres globally and raising eyebrows everywhere they go.

Choreographer: Merce Cunningham
Assistant chorographers: Carol Teitelbaum, Jamies Scott, Andrea Weber
Lighting: Marsha Skinner
Part of: Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels

This show has completed its run at Sadler’s Wells.