Ave Atque Vale Merce Cunningham

You've probably heard by now that Merce Cunningham has died.

As it seems we've been doing a lot lately, let's celebrate a life as well as mourn a loss.



This Annie Liebowitz portrait is an iconic one, and seems to fit the bill.

I was fortunate enough to attend what must have been one of his last public appearances, and maybe his very final performance event at Dia Beacon. It was incredible, beautiful, stunning, moving. The program shared the oft-stated (Alastair Macaulay writes "almost routinely hailed") contention that Merce was The Greatest Living Choreographer, and I asked someone who is more than passingly familiar with the dance world if they could really do that. Make that claim? THE Greatest? And the response was: "Well, who else would it be?"

Good point.




Love these images from his 1958 piece "Antic Meet," which was designed by Robert Rauchenberg and photographed by Richard Rutlege



Now, while I 've said before and will say again that I'm not a fan of favoritism, so that whole 'The Greatest' thing falls a little flat, I think it's surely fair to say that Merce Cunningham was one of the greatest artists in any medium, not limited to dance/choreography, of the last century or so. I have the sense that if you gave him a paperclip, a ball of twine and a tuba he could turn them into something you couldn't take your eyes away from.

Various media outlets/newspapers have their own obituaries, of course. Among many many others are Macaulay at The Times, Tobi Tobias for Bloomberg, and one from the London Telegraph that has no byline, but that yields some choice commentary:

He was impatient with the quest to discover meaning in art; asked what one dance was about, he answered: "It's about 40 minutes."

...for many years he was derided. Fairly early in the life of his company, a New York reviewer wrote: "Last night Merce Cunningham presented a programme of his choreography, and if someone doesn't stop him, he's going to do it again tonight."

The reception was not always rapturous: in Paris in 1964, when the company was beginning to tour Europe, audiences threw tomatoes and eggs, and Cunningham later recalled that people would leave in the middle of the performance to go out to buy more.

Love those, for their display of his persistence, and for their revelation of his originality and passionate creativity as he worked with Rauschenberg, Martha Graham and (especially) John Cage as well as countless other dancers, artists and musicians.

And the obits (along with commentary as he was still working) make the supremely important point that his work continued to be vital, relevant, important, well past the time he was able to dance with full vigor, or even get around unaided. That event we experienced in Beacon was beyond remarkable: he was creating up until the end, and he'll be missed.

It's the Little Things

Sometimes the details just line up and mean more than the sum of their parts. Today I had a friendlier-than-usual exchange with a fellow bus passenger, and I was having one of those Good Commute Tunes days (mostly indie rock, with more Sinatra than chance would seem to demand). But it was a cloudy damp day, and my head was aching dully, so it wasn't exactly an ideal morning.

Then I had one of those moments that's hard to describe. After a note-perfect Guided by Voices song, and a Sinatra tune I actually bumped forward about halfway through, I got the beautiful, plaintive 'Raincloud' by Leah Siegel. Had me in a nice place, and then just as she sang '...the way you feel the sun crashing down on the horizon' the sun broke through the clouds and cast a light that was, let's not be overly dramatic and call it 'miraculous,' but it was stunning. And it drew my attention to one of those buildings that I've surely passed dozens (hundreds?) of times but never really noticed - one of countless structures in New York which have a singular beauty but which all too often blend into undeserved obscurity because of the simple volume of Big Buildings on this island.

But not today. Today, as Leah's guitars made the case for love, I took in the levels of this building, noticed how the details catch the light, saw where arched windows had been bricked over, caught a sign that has probably been hanging in a window for 30 years or more.

Don't have a photo to share with you guys about it, but I wanted to recognize the moment.

And in other news, it's Free Iced Coffee Day at Dunkin Donuts.

"The most important thing is work"

So I was going to write about the Bang on a Can Marathon, and I still might, but I'm kind of tired of just writing about the shit I do on weekends.

Something came to mind tonight as I was doing some networking/scheduling on email, prepping for auditions, and half watching a couple ballgames on tv: I think one of the (many) things that make for an affinity between theater actors and baseball players is the every day element of both of them. Major Leaguers play 162 games over 6 months - pretty much a 6-day week, including tons of travel (and some players do the winter-league thing too); theater actors are expected to do 8 shows a week - again, a 6-day week, sometimes on the road. Ok ok, neither task is as physically demanding perhaps as a marathon, or a football game, basketball game or ballet. But... every day, folks, for however long. And watching the players at this point in the season (early June - not even halfway through) starting to wear down, succumb to injury, just being troupers, I think of the daily dedication that is simultaneously workmanlike, common, and utterly singular and awe-inspiring; and I draw a breath in renewed admiration of people like Cal Ripken Jr. And Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams (all that hitting, plus time away from the majors to serve in TWO wars) Hank Aaron... And Eli Wallach, Laurette Taylor, Vanessa Redgrave, John Raitt... And, what the hell, Boyd Gaines.

Or then again, it might just be that within the last couple days both the Red Sox and the Mets have lost three games in a row for the first time this season...

And ok, I will break my little 'if you can't say something nice...' rule and say apropos "father of minimalism" Alvin Lucier's Canon at the Bang on a Can Marathon: it was like listening to paint dry. Yes yes yes, I understand: you have to be attentive to the microtones, and try to figure out the (glacial) rhythm - those things can keep you from literally falling asleep. But I'm sorry, people: I think the emperor may be naked. Reckon Alvin can take my dissent.

As for the rest of the Marathon - it was fantastic. One of the events that makes me really happy I live in New York.