M E R C E    C U N N I N G H A M

By CYNTHIA JOYCE For more than 50 years, Merce Cunningham has been in the vanguard of the avant-garde. Starting his career as a dancer in the Martha Graham Company in the early 1940s, he gave his first solo concert in 1944 and formed his own company in 1953. Using chance techniques (coin tosses, the I Ching, computers) to determine sequences of movement, eschewing narrative, honing his ceaselessly inventive, abstract choreography with such austere modernist collaborators as his lifelong companion John Cage, Cunningham has created nearly 200 works, an oeuvre that stands as one of the great achievements of 20th-century dance. In 1991, Cunningham and Cage conceived their most ambitious collective effort, a 90-minute performance to be presented in a circular space, with the audience surrounding the dancers and 112 musicians surrounding the audience. The dance (titled "Ocean" because Joseph Campbell had once mused to Cage that James Joyce, if he had lived, would have followed "Finnegans Wake" with a work about the ocean) was to have been presented during the 1992 James Joyce/John Cage festival in Zurich, but was cancelled when no suitable venue could be found. Although Cage died in 1992 before writing the musical score, his ideas served as a springboard for David Tudor, who composed the electronic score of marine sounds, and Cage's former assistant Andrew Culver, who completed the orchestral score. In 1994, "Ocean" had its world premiere at the Kunsten Festival in Brussels, and will have its New York premiere at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park from July 30 to August 4. At 77, Cunningham suffers from arthritis, a condition that has limited his solos. His imagination, however, is as nimble as ever -- and he has some powerful new tools to assist it. In recent years, Cunningham has increasingly used computers in his choreography. Though much has been made of this, Cunningham pointed out that "Ocean" is not a departure from his earlier works. "This is how I always worked -- which was to work in a way I hadn't worked before, in a way that was a mystery to me." Cunningham spoke with Salon on the opening night of the U.S. premiere of "Ocean" at the University of California at Berkeley.

You have suggested that your collaborative efforts with John Cage were somewhat codependent, and that he, when initially considering the staging of "Ocean," had said, "I can't deal with this." Do you think "Ocean" would have been realized if he were still alive? I think so. I'm not sure that's exactly what he said. "Ocean" is a special thing, and at the time he said he couldn't deal with it, there was a very limited possibility it might be done. We could see the enormity of what would be involved, and I think that's what he was saying. But I think if it had come about while he was alive, he would have been very interested. Would he have been pleased with the result? Well, I'm guessing, because I don't know John's mind, but I think in general he probably would. He might have done some things differently, but not radically differently. How is the music integrated into the dance? We don't hear the music until the night before -- the dancers do not dance to the music. The music is made quite separate, much like sight and sound -- they merely coexist. It's more like Fuller's term "synergy," where two energies, quite separate, get together and they produce something that no one realized was going to happen until they came together, and then something happens. The musicians at first didn't like the music. It was very difficult, and very different from what they were used to playing. But with each performance, the way it sounded grew more interesting. And I really think one of the reasons was they could see the dance. Generally musicians are hidden in the pit, but here they could see what was going on. But there was no connection to the sound in any conventional sense. In the years since Cage's death, you have choreographed three new dances, including "Ocean," and prepared almost a dozen European tours. To what do you attribute such productivity? I like to make steps. Sometimes I'm tired, I admit, but that doesn't put me off. I don't mean they are all marvelous or wonderful, it's just what I like to do. The computer in its way has helped that, because you could see steps from another point of view. I used [the computer program] Life Forms mainly as a tool to put phrases into the machine, to make a body of material for the dance. I utilize it in each piece, and I have now for years. With "Ocean," I entered perhaps up to a third of the material. It's a way for me to see the dance, and to make phrases I eventually plan to utilize. Is there any contradiction in applying technology, which is often used to make things easier and faster, to dance, which, like any art, is a process of struggle? I think dancing at the moment has many opportunities with technology. There are ways to think about movement that technology can open up. It would be certainly impossible to do it all at the moment, but the potential is there. I don't know how, exactly, but it's like shifting time into space, but you use time trying to get there. And the newer students don't have preconceived notions of how it should be, they've learned how to think that way. It hasn't changed the direction of my work, although I have added through the use of computers the use of arms. But Life Forms isn't a revolution, it is an enlargement of possibilities that were always there. This way you can see them, which is what technology can do--it can show you black space, the micro as well as the macro. I'm sure too much technology could get in the way. You begin to think, "This is the way it should go," and it's really only one's imagination that stops you. In my own case, I don't think we have that much access to technology that it could get in the way. I find that my work with Life Forms and with film is very difficult, because one has to work with limited material. But that doesn't stop the imagination. With technology and the vaster possibilities, one has to work often within such narrow limits. But that shouldn't stop anybody. For years I've thought dance and technology go together very well. How exactly is the program used? I use it mainly when the group is not rehearsing. First, I use it as a memory aide. Then I use it to look at the dance. It speeds it up for me. I have some idea ahead of time of what the dance will look like, and I can take the material to the dancers in a quicker way. It is still, in terms of elaborateness of movement, elementary. The computer shows the figures going from one position to the next. But everything in it is useful. With the computer, much as with a camera, you can freeze-frame something that the eye didn't catch. But it's there. As a dance notation, it increases the possibilities -- it is immediately visible. That's not always the way a dancer operates. The connection is so immediate, I thought, this is obviously the way to go, it's so direct. When I first put the shape on this figure in Life Forms, John [Cage] said, "Oh, look, it looks like a dancer." [laughs] Have you found parallels between innovation in art and in technology? I think that artists have always been aware of things in technology, though they may not always have had access to it. Certainly visual artists use materials now that were non-existent 50 years ago. Take acrylic paint, for example. With dance, I think it's harder. I think it's incredibly expensive to have an adequate space with adequate equipment. And you can't take film closeups of dancers, it doesn't work--you have to let them dance. Life Forms gave us a way to work and a way to see it that we couldn't have done otherwise. What do you do when you've choreographed something using Life Forms that you recognize to be physically impossible? I always try it. I think it's necessary to try it to find out something, because if you say you can't do it, that's a decision of the mind based on the past. These things you are speaking of are always new possibilities. In order to really find out anything about them, you have to try them. Do you ever face resistance from dancers when trying these experiments? You can't expect them to do something you know to be impossible, but you try to give it to them as directly as possible. And you watch. Maybe they say, 'Well, why don't we try it this way.' It's really about attempting something and letting your mind not get in the way. You try it out, and you fall down. But you have to make the attempt. In 'Ocean', this was a big leap. It's not that you can't do it, you just have to find out how. How do you convey the more difficult steps that you've choreographed on the computer to the dancers? It's really a process of absorbing -- of me transmitting and then the dancer absorbing. The dancers and I are used to working with each other, and they know -- at least I hope they realize this -- that even though I may not seem to know what I'm doing, that it gradually will work out. So it's a question of give and take. It's something of a collaborative effort? It always is, for me anyway. I hope [the dancers] think that way. I bring them the steps, but then I always wait to see how they do it. Each person is different anyway, and if it's for a soloist, I look to see whether this person can do this movement. The structure of the choreography of "Ocean" was based on chance operations using the I Ching. Can you explain how it works? The I Ching is based on the idea that you can cast your fortune. There are 64 hexagrams, each indicated by a fortune of one kind or another. When you cast it, you have to ask a very clear question, and the answer you get is for that time and in that space. If you were to ask the question one second later, it could be different. Going on that basis, it's not about the word part of the hexagrams, but the numbers. There are one through 64 possibilities. So often in dances I made 64 separate phrases, which I put down or tried to put in the computer, each of which is separate -- one doesn't follow any other. Then, you take that as a body of material and cast your fortune as to which comes up. Have you ever been inclined to choreograph in a more narrative style? No. Well, early solos, perhaps, but even those somehow tended to be non-specific. Do you feel that the distinction between modern dance and ballet has broken down? It has become blurred, yes, I agree. But I don't have a problem with that -- I think movement is movement. I think the problem people have is one of style -- the idea of how something should be done. But that varies. Movement is still movement. I think dance at the moment is very diverse, and I think that's very good, I like that. I like that dancers do things in many different ways--they don't necessarily do it the way I do, but they perform in so many different kinds of places -- gymnasiums, churches, non-conventional theaters. How do you feel about political dance? I don't think political art is useful. I think it ends up being like all politics -- about greed and power. You get into politics, and it's always about somebody who wants to control somebody else. And I don't think that's interesting. I think art is separate. It is something of the imagination, rather than something of systems. I don't think art should be used for political purposes. But somebody else can go ahead. You were surprised to receive the Golden Lion award. Did you ever think your work would be considered "mainstream"? I was given that award, and I was very touched, because the only people in the dance world that they had ever given it to before were Stravinsky and Diaghilev. But I think what artists do is break the rules. People set up rules and other people break them. That's the way it continues. I'm not against [being in the mainstream], I don't mean to sound that way. I'm very pleased a lot of people are coming to see the performances, but I've never thought that way. When John and I began, we traveled around in a Volkswagon bus, giving programs to whoever we could. The audiences were very small and very often half of them would leave, because they were so unfamiliar, or they didn't like the music, or all kinds of other reasons. But we were interested in the ideas. John was certainly never interested in a big public. It was just a small group. And I must say, even though it was hard, it was also lots of fun. There was always so much laughter to be had in those days.