Merce Cunningham's Scintillating Portrait is one He Would be Proud of
As life grinds to a halt and global Coronavirus lockdown looms, we’re choosing to support our favourite documentary festivals, screenings and launches that have been forced to go online, by pointing you in their direction.
The first of these is Alla Kovgan’s “Cunningham”, a trance-like experiential 3D ode to the legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham, released by Dogwoof in UK cinemas this week and now available online earlier than expected.
Blending contemporary artistic performance with archival footage, interviews and excerpts from letters, this is a film that stretches the boundaries of its genre, which would have delighted Cunningham’s innate desire to challenge the norms of his own discipline. Kovgan chooses to follow a chronological narrative, but this is where she parts with convention.
After opening to a helicopter shot of the Cunningham Dance Company’s colourful modern day dancers performing atop a sky-high New York rooftop, we’re quickly plunged back to street level and the black and white early 1940s where Cunningham began his dance career as a solo performer. Here we get to grips with his desire to free dance from musical rhythm, turning it into a powerful form of expression of its own, as well as the mixed the response he received, sometimes having eggs and tomatoes thrown at him on stage. We’re also introduced to the film’s style, a pleasing mixture of scrolled written fragments, sound bites and ancient flickering dance footage, already leaping off the screen despite its lack of colour.
However, its the dazzling modern-day interpretations of Cunningham’s dances that steal the show. They punctuate the picture in full technicolour to mesmerising effect, casting the viewer into a trance with stunning sets, alien soundscapes and cutting-edge filming techniques. The performances are so brilliant that the film feels like a Cunningham show of its own, not just the telling of his story. Shot in the courtyard of a beautiful french chateau, at the foot of a tranquil forest of pines or in deceptively endless studio spaces, these displays draw you in and generate a newfound admiration for an art that won’t be familiar to most, and certainly wasn’t to me.
Re-interpretation of Merce Cunningham’s ‘Summerspace’ featuring artist Robert Rauschenberg.
We’re given insight into the dances’ inception, Cunningham’s creative process behind the scenes and observations from the musicians and iconic artists, like Andy Warhol, that were constantly in his orbit. One of them, the musician John Cage, we discover from their written correspondance, was more than just a partner in art. Disappointingly, this isn’t explored any further. Similarly, it’s hinted that his dancers were often frustrated by him. His female performers complained that their roles sometimes felt incidental to the male lead and that, in his later years, he lost his interest in dancers’ flaws and personal lives, something that had once made his company unique. We’re left only to wonder at the trials and tribulations of Cunningham’s personal life, no doubt a fascinating story of its own.
However, the greatest downfall of this early online release is the resulting loss of its 3D capability. Unfortunately we can only imagine how immersive an experience this beautiful film would have been on the big screen - all because of a certain bat somewhere in China…
Find out more and watch “Cunningham” online at the link below.
