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By Tom Phillips
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Published on June 24, 2025
Photo: Maria Baranova
In Conversation with Merce: New Arrangements
Beach Birds/Signals /XOVER/ Suite for Two
Dancers: Sienna Blaw, Sarah Cecilia Bukowski, Jacquelin Harris, Alexander Larson, Justin Lynch, Chalvar Monteiro. Chaery Moon, Hannah Straney
Composer/Vocalist: Anais Maviel
Pianist: Adam Tendler
Venue: Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC
Date: June 18, 2025
Combination and recombination are the DNA of Merce Cunningham’s art. It was born in 1947, when Cunningham and composer John Cage combined their talents in a new way — dance that moved to its own rhythm, with percussionist music unrelated to the steps. New York’s pre-eminent critic Edwin Denby called it “extreme elegance in isolation.”
Cage died in 1992, Cunningham in 2009. But it is just this quality of independence, or isolation, that allows their works to go on living, changing and growing. Cunningham’s dances can be set and reset, folded into each other, danced to new music, capped with new choreography, adapted into other art forms.
All this was on display at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, with the mixed results that come with mutation. The most brilliant recombination was an expansion of the central duet from XOVER (2007). The new version is a Duet for Six, for three couples, changing partners, to new music wailed wordlessly from the piano by composer Anais Maviel. The choreography is elemental — a study of how weight is exchanged between two bodies in tandem: transferred, suspended, balanced, given and taken. The partnerships were all perfect, the three consecutive exits exquisite. Dancing is partnering in ideal form. (After the show we walked through Hudson Yards, where a crowd of sweaty young New Yorkers were trying out their salsa moves, aspiring to something like what we’d seen.)
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Also impressive was a new combination of Signals (1970) and Loops (1971), which Cunningham originally billed as an Event for One. It’s now an event for two dancers and two chairs, an examination of what they all have in common, which is legs. Both humans and chairs can stand and even spin on one leg, it seems, but the chairs require human assistance. This piece featured volcanic bursts of energy from Sienna Blaw and perfect balance in extreme positions by Chaery Moon.
The program began with a filmed performance of Cunningham’s Beach Birds, in which eleven dancers play a flock of birds on Rockaway Beach. Sadly, the film-makers did not add much to the striking choreography and costumes. The best shots were medium close-ups of the dancers, wavering in the wind as they explored how it feels to be soaring, skimming, wading, standing, digging and running in constantly shifting groups. But the camera didn’t move with them, sticking to a few static angles, repeated too often.
Dancers Chalvar Monteiro and Jacquelin Harris added something potent to Cunningham’s 1958 Suite for Two. It was a juicy closing duet called Extended Moment that bordered on romantic passion. I don’t know if Merce would have approved, but the crowd loved it.
All this experimental fun is made possible by a partnership between the Merce Cunningham Trust and Baryshnikov Arts. There’s a third loner in the mix now, keeping Merce on the go. Years ago I was in the second row at the new Baryshnikov Arts Center, sitting directly behind Cunningham and Mikhail Baryshnikov. One still looked like a saltimbanque from Picasso’s Blue period, with a mop of curly grey hair. The other was neat as a pin. But their body language as they leaned in said they were thrilled to be working with each other — two loners in tandem, in time.
