NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS: NEW YORK - Deborah Jowitt on the New York celebration of Merce Cunningham's 100th birthday


Night of 100 Solos: A Centenary Event. Performance view, Brooklyn Academy of Music, April 16, 2019.
"On April 16, One Hundred Years Ago, Merce Cunningham was born. On April 15, 2019, I was sitting in the balcony of the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House among the hundred or so people watching the final run-through of the 'Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event.' Can I say that I assisted at the memorial’s birth? Probably not. The program took even more risks than the patchworked material that his company used to perform worldwide as Events. Each of the seventy-five dancers celebrating his birthday (twenty-five in New York, and the same number in London and in Los Angeles) learned short passages culled from his pieces. In New York, these were taught by a bevy of former Cunningham company members and staged by two of them: Patricia Lent and her associate, Jean Freebury. Chance procedures, rather than choices, surely governed some of their decisions. Talk about a rainbow coalition. None of the people onstage had been members of Cunningham’s company, although many had taken classes in his technique or been influenced by his ideas. ..."
ARTFORUM (Video)
Harkness Dance Fest celebrates 2 milestones

2009 July: Merce Cunningham, Dance Visionary, Dies, 2012 November: Dancing around the Bride

No comments:

Post a Comment