Review: Merce Cunnhingham exhibit at the New Museum (NYC)

By Steve Barnes Most of the New Museum is currently occupied by “Ostalgia,” a mammoth show in which more than fifty artists address the traces that Eastern Europe’s history (including both Communism and Nazism) has left on the artists currently working there. The show, while it has many interesting pieces, is overstuffed with works—including a room in which three different programs of short Polish films play simultaneously while two collections of videos run on an adjacent wall, making it hard to focus on any of them. While undeniably informative and provocative, the whole thing (which is up through September 25) can at times be a bit forbidding. A more stripped down, tightly focused undertaking might have made the exhibition’s point a little clearer. But on the museum’s ground floor, just past the bookstore and tucked behind the snack bar (in a room that you don’t even have to pay museum admission to enter), is a model of simplicity and restraint, Charles Atlas’s “Joints Array.” This installation, which runs through August 28, consists of 23 monitors of varying sizes, on which videos showing the choreographer Merce Cunningham in action run in continuous loops. But, in keeping with the installation’s title, we never see all of Cunningham in any of the videos. One of them starts with an elbow bending, another focuses on a knee, while yet another takes the ankle as its central point. In each video, the joint goes through a broad range of motions and possibilities, showing the human body’s nearly infinite range of movement—at least when that body belongs to a dancer as flexible and creative as Cunningham. We aren’t being told a story here; instead, we are encouraged to really look at the kind of movements we see every day. By just showing a knee or an ankle, those movements get pulled out of the context in which we are accustomed to seeing them. They cease to be average gestures and become choreography. The same is true of the soundtrack that is played as the backdrop to the videos. Put together from ambient recordings made by John Cage, Cunningham’s life partner, they take a wide range of sounds that are part of our daily existence (wind, birds singing, traffic) and turn them into a subtle, evocative form of music. We don’t get melody, we get a compilation of different tones and textures that encourages us to reacquaint ourselves with the sounds of the world around us in a way that makes a perfect match with the stance that the videos take toward the body’s movements. The combination of sound and image results in something that feels like an abstract movie musical, one that keeps on plotlessly unfolding in an eternal present.
My advice for people viewing this installation would be to take your time. The feeling of what Atlas is up to here does not reveal itself in a 45-second pass through the room. You need to slow down, and unload some of the expectations you might have. The whole thing is about changing the way we look and listen, a process that does not happen right away. But if you manage to take “Joints Array” on its own terms, it will almost certainly reward the time you put into it. In addition, the timing of this installation could not be better. It happens just as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s “Legacy Tour,” launched in February 2010, enters its home stretch. The tour was conceived as way to give audiences one final chance to see Cunningham’s dances, performed by the company he personally trained before his death in July 2009. It included the two-day “Merce Fair” that took place at Lincoln Center last month, and will make two more stops in the New York area before winding up with six performances at the Park Avenue Armory from December 29-31. The tickets for those performances, after which the company will disband for good, are sure to be one the biggest bargains of any New York cultural season—Cunningham stipulated in his Legacy Plan that they go for only $10 each. They go on sale on August 15. (For more information, go to armorypark.org. The other two New York stops are from September 9-11 at Bard College’s Fisher Center in Annandale on Hudson and a December 7-10 run as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival (http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=3066). The BAM run includes the wonderful Roaratorio, Cunningham and Cage’s playful take on James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. After the Merce Cunningham Dance Company ceases operations, the many videos Atlas has made showing Cunningham and his company at work will allow his dances and his highly original take on human movement to live on. One way to get some insight into Cunningham’s methods is through the series of videos called “Monday with Merce” that can all be seen on the company’s Web site. And in the future there will be what Cunningham’s Legacy Plan refers to as “Dance Capsules,” digital packages that will include videos, sound recordings, production notes and a wealth of other material. Leave it to Merce Cunningham to continue pushing the envelope, even from beyond the grave. Steve Barnes is a freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in such publications as ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal. ]]>