perfect balance
by Douglas Messerli
Carolyn Brown Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
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In her beautifully written and
revelatory autobiographical study of the American composer and poet John Cage
and the dancer Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown recounts the first time she saw
Cunningham dance, in a Master’s Class in Denver in April 1951:
He was slender and tall, with a long
spine, long neck, and sloping shoulders; a
bit pigeon-breasted. The body was a
blue-period Picasso saltimbanque
though the
face and head were not. I remember
Merce most clearly demonstrating a fall that
began with him rising onto
three-quarter point in parallel position, swiftly
arching back like a bow as he raised
his left arm overhead and sinking quietly to
the floor on he left hand, curving
his body over his knees, rolling over quickly
arriving on his feet again in
parallel position—all done with such speed and
elegance, suppressed passion and
catlike stealth that my imitative dancer’s mind
was caught short. I could not repeat
it. I could only marvel at what I hadn’t
really seen. His dancing was airborne
then; critics and audiences of that time still
cannot forget his extraordinary gift
for jumping. …Merce Cunningham had an
appetite for dancing that seemed to
me then, as it does today, to be his sole
reason for living.
Seeing Cunningham dance, however, was not enough for her and her
husband, composer Earle Brown, to pack up and move to New York. Carolyn had no
intention of becoming a dancer! It was Cage, with whom she and her husband
intensely talked over two nights of parties in Denver, who would truly
influence their decision to move to New York. Although they had intended to go
to Los Angeles so that Earle could privately study with Arnold Schoenberg, the
great composer’s death in July 1951, along with a remarkable concert in their
own living room by the young pianist David Tudor, as well as their earlier
conversations with Cage determined their move East.
Greeted in their new environment again by Cage, with his
“well-documented remarkable open-mouthed half-chuckle/half-laugh that exposed a
large fleshy tongue lolling on lower teeth,” the couple was quickly swept up
into a concatenation of artists, dancers, composers and writers—Morton Feldman,
Christian Wolff Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ray Johnson, Paul Taylor,
and hundreds of other luminaries as they moved from lower Manhattan, to Black
Mountain College—where in 1953 Cunningham first formed his dance company—through
hundreds of American small towns, and eventually to Europe, Asia, and South
America.
Along the way, the reader becomes privy to the hundreds of friendships,
working mates, lovers, and acquaintances (Brown intimates the reasons for the breakup
of the Cage-Cunningham deep friendship with Rauschenberg, and hints at the
dissolution of her own marriage). By the end of this long work, one feels
almost as if he has read a panoramic novel, like War and Peace, instead of straight-forward autobiographical
biography! Certainly, by the work’s last words, with the former Greek
God-panther-madman sitting, wracked with pain in a wheel-chair—we feel not only
that we have seen every important
dance that Cunningham choreographed, but that we know these two great men.
For all of her devotion to and love of
Cunningham, Brown reveals that of the famed duo, Cunningham was the difficult
one, a man often lost within himself, at times almost reclusive, failing to
explain his decisions—including the seemingly impulsive decision to dismiss the
popular Remy Charlip from his company—or even to relate the logic behind or names of the works he created. Brown survived Cunningham’s company for so
long, it appears, because of her great sense of independence, her ability to
accept her mentor’s silences, and her devotion to her art and to the idea of
Cunningham’s greatness.
Cage, on the other hand, comes across as a generous spirit throughout, a
man who loved games, eating (his mushroom-hunting expeditions are renowned),
and, most of all, talking. The gregarious Cage, traveling in the early days
with the company, was responsible, so Brown suggests, for the feeling that they
were, in fact, a company, for the sense of group spirit. Like a loving mother,
Cage is always there to help Cunningham get through the ordeals of travel and
the horrible pain the body of any dancer must endure.
Cage is presented as a joyful being, seeking everyone’s happiness. Brown
writes:
For many years we seemed to
be operating in the world, not in a
world
apart. There was a richness
and variety of experience. …John had friends
from coast to coast and was
always making new ones. And if there was a
really fine museum, or
notable architecture, or maybe just a good movie
around, John would find time
to get us there. Slow scenic routes were
chosen instead of
mind-numbing thruways. “Have you seen Niagara Falls?”
John would ask…. Our
existence then was governed by process, not product.
The means and the end
justified each other. Despite the fact that getting
there (traveling) seemed to
take precedence over being there (performing),
and what and where we ate
appeared to be far more important than any
single performance…our focus
nevertheless was single: art-and-life. No
separation. John’s
credo—accepting the multiplicity of things—was ac-
tively lived in the VW days.
Later on, Merce’s credo—weeding out every-
thing but absolutely
essential to putting on a performance—became the
company doctrine….
It was Cage who wrote to various venues throughout the world and
arranged the world tours that Cunningham’s company would take. Cage, moreover,
was responsible for raising money for many of Cunningham’s performances and
travels. What is utterly fascinating in Brown’s remembrances is just how
different this group of gay artists—Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and
Johns—were from the musical establishment as recounted in Sherry’s Gay Artists in Modern American Culture. At
the same time that Copland, Menotti, and Barber—as well as the established
dance company of Martha Graham—were being paid large amounts to present their
works around the world, Cunningham’s company was turned down year after year
for any governmental financial support. And grants came to Rauschenberg only
after he received the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964.
Cage’s open-mindedness was reflected, as well, in his commitment to chance
operations. While Cunningham, on the other hand, attempted chance operations in
several of his dance works, the actual performances were mostly pre-determined
and were not altered in subsequent renditions. If the dances of the Cunningham
company may seem to be the perfect blending of music, dance and art, Merce’s
method of rehearsing his dancers without music, set, or costumes until the very
last moment, seems to be at odds with the results.
Brown and other dancers make it clear they were not always in sync with
the radical musical compositions by Cage, Wolff, Brown, and others who
Cunningham employed. It is almost as if Merce and company were able to block
out of their minds, at times, integral elements of the whole—although the
critics commonly focused, in their attacks, on just those matters.
In the end, however, we come to perceive that the very greatness of
Cunningham—and perhaps the brilliance of Cage’s music and thinking—had a good
deal to do with the differences between these two men and, at times, the
oppositions of their other collaborators. It seems to me that the beautiful
black-and-white photographs upon this book’s cover express the essence of the
Cage-Cunningham contributions to the whole artistic expression—a kind of
perfect balance, between the arts, yes, but particularly between human beings.
Los Angeles, May 17, 2008
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