Steve Paxton on Merce Cunningham, in 2018

Mar 6

Steve Paxton 2018.xii.15

Interview with Alastair Macaulay

Steve Paxton (1939-2024) agreed to meet me in December 2018 to speak about Merce Cunningham. He was in New York to supervise the presentation of several of his early dances at the Museum of Modern Art. I was in my final month as chief dance critic of the New York Times. Paxton knew that I was (as ~I still am) preparing a book on Cunningham.

I knew of Paxton, and had sometimes observed him, as a highly diverse dancer-choreographer: the greatest of exponents/participants of Contact Improvisation, as the only soloist I have seen to share a programme with Mikhail Baryshnikov and to surpass that paragon by virtue of sheer character and imagination (May 20, 2010), and as a choreographer who had returned to music and musicality from Cunningham independence. But I knew that he had more or less begun his dance career in 1961-1964 as a soloist in the Cunningham company. I also knew that, in those years, he and the artist Robert Rauschenberg had been a couple. During the Cunningham company’s 1964 world tour, Rauschenberg came to a parting of the ways with Cunningham and John Cage, after eleven years of creating historic work with them; Paxton was one of the dancers who left with Rauschenberg. I regret I did not ask him about many things, not least “The Cook’s Quadrille” (1960), an hour-long show for children which included a duet that Cunningham choreographed for Paxton and Juliette Waung, a year before Paxton joined the Cunningham company.

Paxton and I had not met before. We did so, in a fairly noisy downtown Manhattan restaurant of his choice, appropriately named La Mercerie: it grew only noisier as afternoon moved into evening. The recording of our conversation is often hard to transcribe. But I can hear that I ordered tap water while he ordered rum and orange juice.

SP. …I live on a farm. It’s very quiet. I sometimes don’t see people for several days in a row, you know. Here, there are people everywhere!

AM. Ignore it.

SP. No, I just want to…

AM….I hope I sympathise. I’m a farmer’s son and a farmer’s brother. Over New Year, I’ll go to the farm where I grew up and where my brother still farms. So I’m a bit schizoid about the two lives myself.

And I guess Merce’s work suggests that he was a bit that way. I’m thinking of <those works of his often known as> his nature studies, though I don’t think he liked living in the country the way that John <Cage> did.

SP. Did he ever live in the country after he came to New York?

AM. I think he got bored with it very quickly.

AM and SP speak of the late British choreographer Rosemary Butcher (1947-2016), whose work I had reviewed dismissively in the 1980 in The Guardian (UK); Paxton had written to protest against the terms in which I reviewed it. Over thirty years on, I could see that Butcher’s work was just the sort that I would now reconsider.

AM. The only time we’ve ever corresponded before, you ticked me off when I was an angry young critic for being dismissive, in “The Guardian”, of Rosemary Butcher’s work.

SP. Ah! Did I…?

AM. Good for you. I think hers is just the kind of work I think I would write – I hope I would write - differently about now. I don’t know.

SP. I bet you would. I think her work lasted well. If you saw it again, you wouldn’t be looking for the elements –

AM. My head says that you wrote to me – I think it was 1983. That was the year I saw Trisha Brown’s work for the first time. I was a baby. What did I know?

SP. You knew what you knew. The dance world was very – settled in maintaining its values. And those values are important, you know. Without the world of critics and choreographers and audiences, even, that maintained that work, it would not have been supported. I don’t know what would have happened.

What would have happened, though, is that it wouldn’t have been so successful. Merce was maybe the breaking point where narrative was dismissed. The idea now of making a dance with narrative in it is almost unthinkable. How do you do it? I guess they have to do it on Broadway. But they don’t do it just with dance.

AM. Well, there have been retro moves towards story again. Twyla has twice tried it, and Matthew Bourne lives off it. So there are people.

SP. – whose work I don’t know.

AM. Obvious question When did you first come across Merce? And in what capacity?

SP. I was a student at the American Dance Festival, Connecticut College, in probably 1958.

AM. The year of “Summerspace”?

SP. The year of “Summerspace”, “Antic Meet, “Rune” <Actually, “Rune” had its premiere at the American Dance Festival the next year – 1959. Probably that was the year Paxton meant. AM> It was a fabulous programthat they presented. I lived in the same house as the company. I was a scholarship student, so I wasn’t in the regular dorms. So I saw them, not exactly socially, but anyway offstage, not working.

Viola Farber and a woman who was in the company that year named Cynthia Steele. No, Cynthia Stone, at that time. She changed to Steele because of union name problems. They would play Bach two hands, down in the lounge of this house. Remy Charlip was in the company - always engaging. Carolyn <Brown> I admired as a goddess from afar.

So that’s how I met the company. They were – I was quite – This was the first time they had been invited to the dance festival. And I guess it was kind of an initiation into the world of dance, which had been trying to hold them at bay.

AM. Am I right that the Limón company and the Graham companies were also there that year?

SP. Oh yes! Pearl Lang was there that year; Paul Taylor was there that year. I was fresh from Arizona.

AM. What was your dance background? What led you to the ADF?

SP. I had had a few Graham teachers in Tucson, Arizona.

AM. And you were hungry to do more Graham?

SP. No. I was hungry to dance. I didn’t feel very equipped for Graham. Too much leg-stretch. And actually my teachers told me to study with male teachers. I had never had a male dance teacher. So I went to Limón and Cunningham that summer…

AM. And at that ADF you chose to do both Limón and Cunningham? Tell me what happened next.

SP. Well, I fell in love with the Cunningham company. I studied with a Limón dancer named Michael Hollander <1934-2015> who worked with improvisation to some degree. What happened next? I got to see – I was working backstage - so I got to see all the rehearsals of everybody. So I saw each work many times, including the performances.

And I came to the end of the summer with a philosophical - wonder, which was Cunningham, you know? The work is beautiful. I loved the work, I loved the dancing. It was a little bit balletic which was heresy – from my point of view. It was elegant; and it was not – it was more than ballet, it was – All the dancers studied ballet, so that they were balletic. I don’t know about his - He was very, he was very full of ballet, he studied ballet, I think I heard that Graham told him to study ballet, so -

AM. She sent him to Kirstein.

SP. Yeah. Anyway. So.

AM. And you took Merce’s classes?

SP. I took Merce’s classes, yes. And brilliant classes they were.

I think there was a -. His classes happened in an enormous gymnasium. And there was really a feeling of respect and awe for him and the company. The company as in the front line of his classes… And especially Carolyn. She was so cool and so precise. And pretty much technically, as much as <anyone> I’ve ever seen, somebody for whom technique was a natural thing – it was not imposed. She could dance it, she could live it.

Anyway, at the end of that summer I realized that I could not… bring together composition by chance. I also saw John Cage’s lecture with David Tudor that summer. So that blew my mind. I came out of there shocked – shocked by what I had heard and seen.

AM. Did you meet John during that period?

SP. I don’t think so. Maybe….

AM. And you say you were shocked by the lecture in a good way?

SP. Well, shock is shock. I don’t know if this was good or bad. But it ended up, of course, that I realized that there are certain… theatrical experiences that rearrange your mind. So that was exactly his point. He said later – I heard him say that he wanted to stretch people’s ears. But stretching people’s ears is in effect a way into their minds.

No, it was, I guess, a typical lecture for that time. John was reading and making music on the piano. David was under the piano and in the piano and - The noises were – they would make - non-scaler -.…It was a tough transition. I had, I think, a very bourgeois artistic background beforethat moment. Yeah, I was really shocked.

So I came to New York. I got a job, and I thought about Cunningham a lot. I finally decided that, first of all, work has to manifest – dance has to manifest – in a <body?> somehow . So his technical approach and his choreographic approach didn’t have to be the same thing. And then I started thinking just about the choreographic approach. Why - I’m not sure I’d read any Cage about this matter or anybody else. I’m sure I’d spoken a bit to company members or - about the choreography. And chance….

Well, I would say about six months later, I accepted this approach. Before that, I had been trying to find an argument to reject it.

But I was drawn to the company. I did, I did fall for them. And the work. And that’s what pulled me through to finally accepting the chance procedures. They just seemed so inhuman, so un- what I thought of as artistic at that time.

AM. How were you aware of chance procedures in Merce’s work? We all hear of them, but even Cunningham dancers tend not to see them in action.

SP. Very, very little. Just really that he used dice or coins, to set up various places in the theatre and in space. So maybefacings, maybe entrances and exits, maybe sequences of movement…

AM. And did you ever see those dice or coins shaken?

SP. Never; never.

AM. It is a mystery. Now the curious thing is you can look at Merce’s notes: they’re in the Library, the originals. And you can see how, in some works - painstakingly for onework before your time, “Springweather and People” (1955) - he spent pages just working out “Which parts of the body am I going to use how?” He works out how to separate the forearm from the upper arm, and then how dice are going to work on each and then in space…

SP. In the chance procedures?

AM. Yes. And then you kind of see how he’s shaking dice. And it’s all done before the dancers come to rehearsal. And there’s information that Carolyn and people never knew.

SP. So then he has to learn, himself, the sequences? And then teach it?

AM. It’s extraordinary, the painstaking work, all sitting by himself, just throwing, throwing.

I’m sure there are decisions he makes that the dice aren’t going to be let in on. But it’s very strange watching the mind at work. Sometimes, as he sees what the dice are telling him, then he sees what kind of piece it’s going to be.

Anyway, I’m interrupting you.

SP. Not really, because – that was my experience too. I never saw the dice or the coins; I heard about them. I believed that they were used.

And in a way, I can see, once you start to see these pieces, you start to see how unpredictable he was. He did not fall into a way of – Oh I don’t know, using the stage – He didn’t fall into a predictable experience. And some of them were really right off the wall. You wouldn’t think that anybody would think to use the –

AM. Do you remember any particular early pieces where you thought “What in the world, where did that come from?”

I mean, I think the beginning of “Rune” is amazing, actually.

SP: It is.

AM. Just Merce standing in that corner with his back to us.

SP. It is. It is. I was thinking of “Rune”. But, in the end, I thought of “Rune” being some amazing – I think it was just a masterpiece. But the structures within it - I mean I saw it a lot of times within that summer - I guess I got used to it. I guess, by the end, I was relishing it rather than being surprised by it.

AM. Did you get to dance in it?

SP. No, never. In fact, in my time in the company, it wasn’t in the repertory. So – was there - was Remy in it – was there another man?

AM. I must check. I’m pretty sure there’s more than one man.

SP. I don’t have any recollection of Remy in it, in that work. <Nonetheless, Remy Charlip danced in all the 1959-1960 performances of “Rune”. In 1963-1964, when Paxton was in the Cunningham company, “Rune” was danced with another male dancer - probably William Davis or Albert Reid. AM.>

AM. And I don’t know how long it went before Merce brought it back. And I think Rauschenberg did a second set of costumes for it. And then I think there are some non-Rauschenberg costumes that have been used in more recent years. I think Carolyn’s always angry because the first set were the ones she believed in-

SP. Those costumes were beautiful. I mean, you know, leotards and tights – but the colours - – a great statement – very beautiful.

AM. I’m jumping, but when did you first become aware ofRauschenberg?

SP. That summer. I think so.

AM. And did you get to know him then?

SP. No. Now I’m thinking it must have been ’61 when I met him. I think he was up there <at Connecticut College>,working with Merce on something. I can’t think what it would have been. Oh, “Aeon”. Which I was in. That was the first piece I was in. So that’s how I met Bob. He was making the costumes.

AM. How long did you study with the company in New York before you were taken into it?

SP. If I count from ’58 <Probably 1959 is the year Paxton began>…. I mean, I wasn’t regularly there until - There was a certain –

I took a spring course with - with Merce, and afterward, returning to the Limon studio where I had a scholarship, And José called me on it. He said “Where have you been?We expected you to be in our spring course!”

He didn’t like Merce very much; he really was very shocked by Merce in fact. He said, - and what I heard him say – I saw him come offstage at one point and say “I’ve never seen anything like that.” It was about as - He didn’t mean it as a compliment! He meant it really as a negative - He was too high-falutin’ to say it… He <Limón> was friendly enough to me until – until he sensed I was wondering. He sensed I was leaning. At that point I guess – We mutually understood that my scholarship was over and I had made a choice - he pushed me into a choice.

AM. Can you say, when you chose Merce, was it more a mental thing or a physical thing? Or could you separate the two?

SP. It was definitely a mental thing: I had struggled with that work and had accommodated it somehow.

It was definitely a physical thing, because I loved the technique, and I loved his dancers.

So I think I admired his position in the dance world, which was a kind of an underdog, a proud but poor relative of the dance, and struggling. And I also heard, I think, probably from the company, lots of stories of antagonistic audiencesin New York and people throwing things and shoutingduring performances.

And I encountered that in Paris, when I was with the company <1964>. We had a performance in Paris where, after the interval, the audience came back with vegetables, and threw eggs and tomatoes at poor Viola and Merce, who were doing a duet after the interval. The French can get very rude! I’m sure they weren’t that rude at the Y or wherever it was -

AM. Other than a week at the Theatre du Lys in ’53 <actually, 1954>, they’d never really had a New York season. Just the odd night at the Henry Street Playhouse and places like that. And then you were there on the world tour when everything changed -

SP. Thanks to the New York Times -

AM. - keeping him out -

SP. - Yes, by not writing about him, not mentioning him.

AM. Meaning John Martin <dance critic of the “New York Times” from 1927 to 1962>?

SP. Yes. So I think that that was –

AM. I just sent a check <meaning correction?> to Stephen Petronio. I’d posted a video I’d taken of your choreography on Instagram <featuring Petronio dancers>. He had reproduced it and had quoted the New York Times review <which I had written>. So I wrote back saying “Never trust the New York Times!”

AM. I’m always terrified that, what John Martin did to Merce, I’m doing to somebody else.

SP. I think it’s inevitable.

I don’t know that what he <Martin> did to Merce was inevitable. It seemed very conscious on his part. He just wanted to stop this from happening.

I think that’s inevitable that critics have a limited number of shows to see and make choices and who they can actuallywrite about – who they have the heart to write about - must be limited – especially the dance world as it has become. There are so many people involved. It’s been atomising. In the same way I think the art world has been atomised–

AM. Curiously with age I think my tastes have got broader – thank God – But this time last year I interviewed Suzanne Farrell – wonderful woman, witty, clever. She looked at me and she said “Alastair, I read your pieces. And I enjoy reading them. And I believe you like everything you say you like. My question is: How?” <Laughs.>

SP. What does she like?

AM. What does she like? She loves Balanchine. She’s got room in her heart for some other forms of ballet. She’ll look at some other kinds of modern dance, but I don’t know what she makes of it. When Merce, not so long before he died, came to the Kennedy Centre some months before she died <fall 2008> and she was the resident company, she went to his dressing room beforehand and just said “We’re all looking forward to it so much.” And that meant a lot to Merce. What she felt afterwards, history does not report.

SP. Yes, I wish history would… pull up its trousers and do some work on that!

AM. There are some Balanchine dancers who really got Merce sooner or later and loved it. But I would love to know what Suzanne thought.

I know there are some Balanchine people for whom, if you don’t use music in that sense, -

SP. I mean yeah, exactly. And this is – This is such an interesting factor in this thing about John Martin. How is your mind composed? How is your aesthetic mind composed?

AM. Well, he began as a Graham person. So first he resisted Balanchine. I just came across a review he write in ’47 of Edwin Denby’s first collection, and he’s very sniffy about it. It says, “You can see that Mr. Denby’s affiliations are all with the neoclassic ballet school”, as if that were bad. Within two years, he’d come round to the neoclassic school.

It's very difficult when you suspect that some critics are writing not from the point of view of gut instinct but from some kind of politics, <or because> somebody has seduced them.

SP. I’m not sure that’s fair.

AM. I hope I’m wrong. He made a very sudden change about Balanchine…

SP. Well, you think that was political?

AM. Well, it’s widely believed that Lincoln Kirstein went out of his way to win John Martin, and finally with<Balanchine’s> Firebird, which was a huge success,<26.48> Martin didn’t resist any more. Anyway, I’m sure it was a wonderful Firebird. But only a year or two before…

SP. Is that politics or is that persuasion?

AM. I kinda call it all politics, but that’s a very loose…

SP. I just feel – I just feel that the dance world of that time that there was something very precious that they needed to maintain. It’s a very big structure, dance; and the lives of the people involved… Teaching of the students should, as ballet does, start as children, and change their bodies, as they’re developing, into a ballet body. And there’s no other way to achieve that, you know. In that teaching.., the brains of the students are also being changed, and watched. And so someone like Suzanne <SP actually said “Susan”>can’t see anything but Balanchine: it’s not surprising. That’s all she was allowed to see or think or feel, you know, for so much of her life. How could she develop a <taste> for something else?, even closely allied forms of ballet?

AM. You put it so beautifully.

AM. I’ve got a million questions to ask you straightaway. I guess the big one is: You’re making a wonderful case for Merce and John as rebels against the order -

SP. Not even against. Not even against. Merce was very pro-ballet. ...I’m not sure it was relevant to them as a choreographer. I think he and John, both West Coast guys, both much closer to the Orient than we are over here, had picked up from the atmosphere Zen thoughts, Oriental philosophies, a lot of things that had no resonance in our world… So that’s why I would say they weren’t against… I ‘m not sure they were that politicised.

I did hear John say… He quoted – Who wrote “Three Saints in Four Acts” or “Four Saints in Three Acts””?

AM. Gertrude Stein – they loved Gertrude Stein.

SP. No, who was the composer?

AM. Virgil Thomson?

SP. Virgil Thomson said “I hope to live to see the end of this craze for Bach”. `And John quoted that. That made me very interested in Bach! I knew nothing about Bach, really. That’s what put me onto the Goldbergs. I just wanted to experience what it was that John was at the receiving end of. I wanted to find out `What’s the point here?” And I experienced Bach, and Bach was wonderful. And I experienced John, and John was difficult. The main thing is he’s never beautiful. He’s never anything Western music proposed.

So I can admire him philosophically, I can listen to the sound and admire it philosophically, but I’m not getting music out of it….

AM. When did you realise or how did you realise that these men weren’t – I was saying “rebels”, but let’s us another word: “alternatives” or –

SP. Yes, let’s find another way to phrase it.

AM: When did you start to realise that these men were operating from some kind of belief? That they had a world view, shall we say? Or philosophy?

SP. I think overall the quality of their writing. They weren’t writing to put down other forms, other composers. They didn’t seem political in their writing.

And Merce’s writing is so gentle. You must have read - Isn’t it beautiful? The spirit in which he wrote is companionable and humble, I think, in general.

And Cage is - he’s almost an absurdist. Logically and philosophically coherent, but so extreme that he’s…

AM. And I think by the time you came along, it was the time of the Theater of the Absurd, with Beckett and Pinter and Ionesco. All of these people in their absurdist way were making sense. And John was ahead of them.

SP. Well, ahead of them because he wasn’t trying to be absurd. I don’t know that Beckett was trying to be absurd.

AM. I don’t think so either, but it seemed absurd to others at the time: a kind of sense that nobody else could figure out.

… I think there may have been one or two scores by John that were beautiful, but not so many –

SP. Some of the piano music is very beautiful.

AM. Yeah, and the quiet music he composed for “Inlets” (1977), when he was going back to the world of the Northwest – quiet, just a little glugging, just the sound of the countryside that you and I know, far from man. But those are few and far between. I now think he was trying to create hostile environments so that – Merce’s work could get a bit damned classical at times and John always wanted to shake you up – especially in an Event situation where he could improvise….

SP: John’s music volume was a crime.

AM. How much – Well, you’re saying how much it upset you at the time. Did you ever ask or argue at the time?

SP. With whom?

AM. With anybody. Could you go to John, or any other musicians, or Merce?

SP. No. You mean when I was in the company? No.

No, I didn’t. I didn’t actually mind the volume of the work that I was in, while I was onstage. Carolyn found it painful. And her father couldn’t come to performances because it was too painful for his ears.

So in that way… I think there’s very heavy evidence that loud sound is damaging. I don’t know why he ever – decided to do that. I do think they made amazing sonic images. Enormous things, happening somewhere in the universe. Giant stuff, you know: stars colliding, something like that. But I’m not sure, I’m not sure it was helpful to Merce.

AM. “Aeon” is the first piece you were in. What was that like for you?

SP. It was a pretty – I don’t know – It was a great experience for me…. I would say it was… I thought it was sort of… middle-range Cunningham. I didn’t think it was fabulous or anything, but it might have been fun to watch. I don’t think I ever got to see it.

AM. There was a duet he must have liked for two women, with wings in the costumes, that he used to keep that in Events even into this century.

What was your next? You were in “Story”, you were in “Winterbranch”, and I’m probably leaving out a few pieces.

SP. I had to learn quite a few works just to be in the company.

AM. And you were in “Septet,” because you’re in the <1964> film of that.

SP. “Septet”, “Suite for Five.”

“Antic Meet,” did you say?

AM. I didn’t, but you were in it, so that’s great.

SP. It was a pretty extensive repertory. And by the time we went on tour, we were doing a very good repertory, on tour, so we had to learn all those works… I can’t remember how many I was in. Not many. I remember I wasn’t in “Crises”,I wasn’t in… I remember that I used to – When we got to Poland, there was a theatre with a raked stage and an opera prompt box at the front. And I could watch the performance from that prompt box. So I must have been seeing works that I wasn’t in. But I can’t remember what I was seeing.

AM. What were the pieces that either you inherited Remy’s role or that you created a role that stayed with you most importantly?

SP. “Suite for Five”.

AM. Can you say why?

SP. Again, it posed a problem.

I guess it’s something every dancer has to face. But we were told – I was told – it’s for the movement. And I didn’t know how to turn off all the other parts of myself, whatever I thought they were that weren’t invested in the movement. Not to elaborate in any way, trying to see it as purely classical. It’s a kind of … Once you’re focused on it as a whole – it’s a receding goal – You know “Am I doing it - ?Could I do it?” And so it left me with almost the same feeling I had that first summer when I was trying to think about Merce and chaos - what ended up as the chaos theory. But it was on a personal level. You know… How do you just do somebody else’s work? Are other people doing it better? …I kind of love that kind of puzzle.

I kind of love being confronted with where my brain was unable to define what I’m doing.

AM. There was a theory at your time and before your time Carolyn talks about it in her book that really Merce had stories in all of his pieces, and either you tried to find the stories or you made them up, sometimes changing them for each performance. I think Carolyn and the other women particularly loved that way of performing: it was a way of getting through… But Carolyn in her book admits when it comes to “Suite” that there are no stories there; that if ever there

SP. And I’ve seen it, you know? It’s such - And it is just the purest thing. It’s like <scented?> crystals all reflecting off each other. How can you do that? I think if you set out to achieve that. But if you cause the dancers to almost withdraw from their own presence as a performer - the presence of Hollywood, Broadway, modern-dance performance, the style or whatever you call it and just very simply do these steps, it almost feels like you’re not dancing, it almost feels like you don’t have any of the immediate improvisational choice for transitions…. Of course, I can’t remember the music.

AM. It’s a very sparse score.

SP. Is it?

AM. Is it Feldman? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s John. I should know, I beg your pardon.

SP. Anyway, I don’t remember the music, but I don’t think it was helpful. <It was, and is, Cage’s “Music for Piano”.AM>

It gave me a sense of great isolation. You’re out there on the stage in front of people, but you feel like you’re moving in Antarctica or something. 46.47 Just great austerity, great isolation. And that in the theatre, with an audience.

AM.

SP. I just found it an experience of great depth. Subsequent people – A few of the dancers I’ve mentioned. Somebody wrote about it when it was last done, I think they said special quality.

AM. What was it like being the other dancer ? What was it like being beside him?

SP. You know, Remy wasn’t much of a technician, so I think that the roles that I inherited weren’t so difficult to do. I wasn’t much of a technician either, but I was young and, you know, energetic. So the dancing wasn’t difficult. I know that in “Summerspace” there’s a sequence where Merce and the other man – me – you know, inward leap followed by external leap… I was always very careful to match his height, so that everything... I was never told to do that. And the rhythm to taker the leaps, so I could have gone a little higher, On the other hand, I felt like it would have been wrong for the dance almost, let alone the relationship with another performer onstage, to be going on a more virtuosic version of the movement. So the movement remained defined by the partnership.

In “Aeon”, there was a sequence where we had the same step. He was at the back of the stage with me, doing the same step. That was fun.

We didn’t have that much work together. Most of his work was with the women. And even – What is that - There was a work he made on me – He used me as someone to work out movement stuff with…. “Winterbranch” The question is basically “What’s it like to work with him onstage?” I think it ended up we didn’t do that much. My part of it, whatever he used me for, went into other people’s parts. And my part of it wasn’t very big and I didn’t have that much really. I don’t think I had really anything to do in that piece. So it was sort of co-existence. It wasn’t the kind of performing where you could have riffs together, you know, like in acting where two guys act together on a street cornerand they know their lines and where they can change. It wasn’t at all like that.

AM. Did you feel anything near to a riff with any of the women?

SP. …Probably not. If by “riff”, we mean a little improvisation on a set form. Probably not.

The “Suite for Five” experience was very, very odd, so I was set in a mode of movement.

AM. Later on, the nearest Merce ever seemed to get to improvisation was with some dancers in some big solos. He’d say “This has to be a minute long. But I want you to take it faster and slower within, but it must remain a minute long, whatever you do with it. Did he ever do that with you? Or was that a later development?

SP. “Story” was sort of like that.

AM. What do you remember generally of “Story”?

SP. The structure was determined and was shown to us just before the performance, while we were in the wings. We knew the structures, and so we could just take a risk. We were allowed to change the timing; we were allowed to change - Of set steps he had given us, we were allowed to affect the number of times something was done. It was not loose. It was more, I would say, choice than improvisation. We had some choices about how to do a very set - We knew the basic set material; we could play with it a little bit.

AM. So while all this was happening – we’re talking 1963-64 – you’re starting to become aware of Judson, and you’re starting to dance also at Judson?

SP. ’62.

AM. You’d joined Cunningham because it took your mind further than in some way it had yet gone. Now Judson in some ways goes way further. Did that seem exciting?

SP. Yes. Yes.

AM. Would you like to enlarge?

SP. You would like me to enlarge!

Oh. Um. Well, “Story`’ and a piece called “Field”, which I was not in, had some choice by the dancers about the structure. Meanwhile Yvonne <Rainer> was making a dance for – I can’t remember – “Three Heads and Six Arms”, some title like that <“Dance for 3 People and 6 Arms”, 1962. AM> , which was somewhat looser. Trisha was beginning to work on what were called - game structures, which, much as in a game, you had to make choices about various things, the spacing and the timing or whatever. So “Story” and “Field” along came on after those. And I was kind of waiting for Merce, you know, “Why don’t you explore this area?” “He’s so stuck in set material. Why is that?”

I was interested in improvisation. In 1967, I finally decided to start exploring all that. And it’s a complex area. …

In retrospect, it’s not surprising that Merce was not interested. Like those people interested in neoclassical ballet not being interested in anything else. Of course not. It’s all you know. “There are other things. But who cares?” I guess is the basic response to new development.

AM. Did you ever get to talk about this with Merce? During <your time with the company> or later?

SP. No.

AM. Was that a natural part of things? Or was it frustrating not being able to have a conversation with him about things like that?

SP. We were very friendly when I was newly a student of his, and he’s given me a scholarship. To earn that scholarship, I had to clean the studio. So I was there alone with him many days a week. We could talk then and joke and be loose.

The minute I joined the company, that stopped. He became formal. And I think he didn’t want anyone in the company for the wrong reason. He wanted them there for the dance. “Just do the movement. Don’t do it for allegiance to me, or some larger, or different cause….”

AM. Were you psychologically equipped to cope with that?

SP. I had no previous experience with a choreographer like that. Also look at our age difference. He must have been in his forties, I was in my twenties. What did I have to tell him? How interesting was I? I don’t think very!

AM. Some people who knew Merce both before that and later felt that he had moods and depression. Did you feel that?

SP. Yes.

AM. How did it manifest itself?

SP. Okay, so we were getting ready for the 64 tour. We were in Hartford, doing the entire repertory on a little,insufficient stage. We were getting ready for the tour, and this was the out-of-town tryout, sort of. Maybe it was “Septet” - some dance that was strictly stopwatch, normally. We were a few seconds off, and Merce stormed out. And the rehearsal threatened to fall apart. Well, I wasn’t afraid of Merce, in the sense that I wasn’t cowed by him. I think everybody else was. I think Merce in a bad mood… upset them. So I said I would go and talk to him. So, on behalf of the company – I didn’t put it this way when I went to see him - I just said “Merce, what we need is for you to put us on stopwatch and go through the dance, and we can figure out, you know, where we’re going wrong.”

Stopwatch was the rehearsal director for that company. It told us when we were right and wrong. We were so on, I must say, Alastair! “Aeon” was a long – fifty minutes almost? – we would be within twenty seconds. And John’s music was not in any way – it didn’t tell you how you were relating in time to anything. So it was all the movement, all the movement of the company’s clockwork and directions that made it happen, the sense of pacing from his thoroughness with us. We could do fifty minutes, you know, within twenty seconds. Unbelievable! On different sized stages, on different shaped stages.

AM. But he wanted those twenty seconds to be –

SP. Oh, he didn’t want those twenty seconds to be there. He would accept them, as a sign of our humanity, unfortunately.

AM. The final company always tell the story of a runthrough of “BIPED”, which is maybe forty minutes long, and they made so many mistakes <that> they were thinking “What’s Merce going to say?” And at the end they were absolutely on stopwatch time and Merce was sitting there with a great grin on his face: he was entirely happy.

SP. It’s unbelievable. That aspect, I think, should be in your book.

AM. Thank you.

Sitting here with you, it occurs to me that it must have been stronger with him than it was with John, really. Isn’t that interesting? There must have been a different musicality in Merce than in John.

And that was one of my questions I wanted to ask you: Did you ever feel when you were learning this movement – say in “Summerspace” <indicates the rhythm of the sequence SP and he were talking about earlier> - that it has its own inner music?

SP. Pace and rhythm, yes.

AM. You wouldn’t go further into music than that? Carolyn would; and I think Valda <Setterfield> would.

There are little bits when Merce seems to have made dances to music without telling anybody what the music is. David Vaughan told the story that he and Carolyn were waiting to go out with Merce at the end of the day - maybe to a movie or to dinner, I don’t know – I don’t know which studio it then was – but they heard him playing, I think it was Ravel’s second Valse Noble et Sentimentale, because Merce was a good pianist, as you probably know better than -

SP.I didn’t know at all.

AM. He taught himself as a boy. (He taught himself Russian on one of the tours. The autodidact.) Anyway, good piano, playing this Ravel. Either Carolyn or David said“How wonderful to hear that music, Merce, you should make a dance to it.” And Merce said “I already have.” We know nothing of it.

And there were Exercise Pieces called – I think one of them was called Stravinsky, another was called Mozart, another maybe Tchaikovsky – and nobody knows which bits of those composers, but apparently, when he first taught them, I think Robert `Kovich in the ‘70s did the dance <he was taught>; and having done it,. He said out loud “I love that: it feels like Mozart.” Then he walked away, and I think Merce said quietly, and I think David Vaughan was one of the people who heard, “It was to Mozart.:”

SP. Oh wow. So music would give them information to use that coins wouldn’t. It would give him – there is obviously a different time-based relationship that the dance..

That’s why Balanchine used music in the way he did - that’s the most obvious use of it.

AM. What did you feel about dancing to the music in “Septet”?

SP. I thought it was a little bit corny. I thought that dance was a little bit of a throwback. I didn’t know whether that was intentional or whatever. Yeah. Joyous, dancing couples.

10.

AM. Speaking of couples, I suppose I should ask you one of the big questions about Merce: Did you in those days ever think it was odd that a man who was part of a male-female couple almost always made male-female duets?

SP. Remy had noticed that.

AM. Remy?

SP. Yeah. So I didn’t go any further with it. So I didn’t go any further with it. I didn’t know whether to be upset on the genders we had, you know.

He also said that Merce was using gender <words indistinct, but probably implying Cunningham’s ballet-style way of partnering with the man behind the woman> .

AM. Remy said that?

SP. Yeah. Remy had a lot of critiques of Merce: not – not dumb ones.

I guess I accepted it. “This is the work. This is what he does. Is that his limitation?”

I mean, what would his being in a relationship with another man have to do with the way he presents bodies onstage? In those days?

AM. Merce wasn’t about self-expression in that respect.

SP. Yeah.

AM. He wasn’t a gay choreographer in the sense of “Let me show you my personality.” And John was even less so. And I think John at some level, for all of his openness, was probably traumatised by having divorced – for being divorced by Xenia. I think that was a very big thing that had happened at the outset of the relationship with Merce.

And Merce had grown up in the world of ballroom – he knew about that kind of duet.

It would have been nice over the years, logically speaking, to have seen a Merce world that included some same-sex duets. I’m not saying it had to be about same-sex duets, but <where there are six male-female duets, it would be good to see at least one same-sex duet>.

SP. Are there no male duets in -?

AM. Just about not. It used to seem radical if we saw men touching each other, you know. In the 1990s he began to do a little of that, but there wasn’t really much. And in one piece in ’88 -

SP. Maybe he didn’t want it to become about gender.

AM. I think he really didn’t. And that probably came from John. John in the last three years of his life suddenly began to change tack. It was the era of AIDS. They had both taken the AIDS test in case there had been a problem. And John started to give one or two interviews about his own sexuality. And there was the famous moment in ’89 when John came out came out on behalf of both of them.

SP. Is that the one where he cooks and Merce does the dishes? Yeah. So that was Merce’s remark?

AM. No it was John. A scholar has actually found a film of that moment. And I must find that film. It was at Berkeley California – would it just be – and I think David <Vaughan> was chairing the usual Cage-Cunningham discussion, with questions from the floor and said “We’ve just got time for one more question.” And apparently this very polite, mealy-mouthed man said “Yes, would you like to say anything about your personal relationship?” The question that nobody had ever asked. And apparently – dancers told me – David went kind of <mimes polite embarrassment>

AM. - and Merce just kind of froze and John starting beaming from ear to ear and just said “Well, I do the cooking and Merce washes the dishes.” And there was this roar when he only got half way through it; and there was applause as well as laughter; and then when there was a bit more silence, he finished the sentence…It went round the world like wildfire. People in London were telling me about it within days. Whether that would have changed their work I don’t know, because John only lived three more years.

11.

AM. We’ve been talking about Merce as a rather remote person, but John was a strong personality. Were you always aware of this strong personality? You were touring with him a lot. And did you get to know him in a way you didn’t get to know Merce?

SP. Yes, in a way.

AM. And can we talk about the Rauschenberg thing too?

SP. We had a conversation at one point, John and I. I can’t remember what led up to this exchange. But I think he was correcting me – something I had said. And he said that <undecipherable> And this was so unexpected. And he presented it as a well-known - as if it were a well-known fact… I had worked along the opposite track, so I must have said something to …

In that way, acid on his part. It made me think that he was not - - accepted him as – that he was somebody with a normal range of questions and opinions inspite of his genius. I don’t know.

I think he was not without conflicts. All that study of Zen had not drenched his soul clean of -…

AM. I think he does say somewhere “Zen is very important to me, but I am a very imperfect practitioner of it.”

SP. There you go.

AM. I know somebody who worked with Meredith Monk, who was hitting the roof about something on one occasion, and was saying “Meredith, a little more Zen!”

SP. A very useful reference in those moments.

AM. To me, a lot of Merce’s work is an expression of Zen. Did it feel like that at the time?

SP. I assumed it was. I assumed the Zen came from John. I don’t know why I thought that. I don’t know why I would, but I never heard of Merce studying – I didn’t hear Merce talking about his connection to Suzuki or any mystical stuff at all. So I assumed that - But anyway. I later realized the West Coast thing – that Oriental mysticism at that time was more evident in California and the West Coast than anywhere else.

AM. They’d both been to a terribly influential lecture <by Nancy Wilson Ross> – probably more influential on John – I think back in ’39 that had connected Zen to DaDa. For John, that was a lightbulb moment. But Merce was there.

It’s terribly hard to work out how much Merce consciously studied these things. But I think he did. There’s one letter to John –

SP. Well, he taught himself Russian. He taught himself piano.

AM. And he didn’t let anybody know these things. He was secret. And when you look at his notes, it’s really startling. Occasionally, not often, you can see he’s thinking, I won’t say in stories, but at least in some of the work you can see he’s some kind of Abstract Expressionist, at least in some of the work. He’s starting with important things that are disturbing him, And then he starts to roll the dice and work out a system, and it’s almost as if he’s worked it out by doing the dice. But it begins with something heart -

SP. Does that - Caroline’s <Carolyn’s!> – the evidence apparently that there was music implicit in the steps –

AM. Carolyn always tells the story, when she did “SecondHand” with Merce, in ’72? ’70?- late in her time with him – she’d done all the rehearsals; then either at the dress rehearsal or the first performance she was doing this long duet with Merce, and she saw this expression of deep pain on his face. And when she next saw John, she said “I’m really worried about Merce – has he got an injury? What’s this about?” And he said “Oh I don’t think you know, this piece is Socrates, and Merce there is approaching the death of Socrates. And Merce had never said it to anybody. Then they could oput it together afterwards that that had been originally the piece that Merce had prepared to that Satie score, “Socrate” and the Satie Estate had said “You can’t use that”, and so John had made this score he called “Cheap Imitation” which was fitted to all the rhythms.

SP. Yeah .

12.

AM. Tell me about the clash between the three of them – Rauschenberg, Cage, and Cunningham – on the big tour.

SP. I don’t know much about it. I don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years. It was so shocking. It says loads about how these men conducted their lives that I don’tknow more about it, because there I was in the company, and living with Rauschenberg in some kind of relationshipwith all three of them.

I think it was attributed to a kind of childish reaction by Merce of the adulation that Bob got after winning the Venice Biennale, and when reporters began to write that Bob Rauschenberg was coming to town with a dance company. Bob was working his ass off for that dance company, I must say. The whole thing, including the Venice portion. He and Alex Hay were running the stage. They didn’t speak these foreign languages, like Italian. So it was very complicated to get ideas across in many of the venues. Bob was adamant about checking the stage for stuff – you know, staples being a big problem – splinters, nails protruding, on some of these old stages. So that was very time-consuming. He arranged the lighting, sometimes lavished supplies, some kind of <inaudible>. So I don’t think Merce could have thought Bob was slacking off or becoming too successful or anything like that. It would have been crazy to think Bob was. But I think he <Cunningham> was disturbed by the fact that he – it was his damned company and his damned tour, and Bob was getting a huge amount of the publicity.

Then what was it, “Story” in London. Because Bob and Alex. Do you know Dartington? So the stage is minute, butrather deep…. The story is that Rauschenberg was charged with making a new set for each performance at Dartington. He and Alex – the sets behind the dance…. That led to more performative set-making in “Story” in London. So I can’t remember whether it was at the Phoenix that we made it a piece over a number of nights that culminated on the last performance. So that I think the critics were sort of aware that this was happening, that a Rauschenberg was arising, in the middle of this dance. Stuff like that. I think that made Merce a little crazy.

Anyway we got to Stockholm. And the museum thereoffered Rauschenberg a performance. Rauschenberg was traveling with me and with Alex Hay and Deborah Hay, with whom I had – We had all worked together at Judson. So he opened it up to us., He made a piece, and the others made pieces, and I made a piece, which we saw <inaudible> at the museum…

For some reason – Oh, there was another crisis then. The tour was going to be terminated at that point because of lack of funds. So his – I think Bob just made a phone-call to Leo Castelli and said “Sell some work and send us the money” or something. And so the tour could continue… But I think that, too. took the power out of Merce’s… He was, I don’t know, he was ready to stop.

AM. Was it <the animus against Rauschenberg> much more Merce than John? Or could you tell?

SP. I don’t know.

AM. How did it express itself?

SP. I think Alex Hay knew more than I did. But – I think I just heard that the tour might terminate, you know. And Bob stepped in to save the day, kind of thing.

I never heard about Merce; I got the feeling of clouds thundering over him. There was never any – The company was not informed.

13.

AM. Were you ever aware on the world tour of the opposite? of Merce being more elated than he’d ever been, because he was suddenly getting this big attention and success? -

SP. I think London must have given him that, but I don’t recall it from him.

AM. Somebody, I forget who, told me that they’d never seen Merce like that. Carolyn and Viola were sharing a bedroom, which was not a good idea. And I forget what other problems were facing the company. And Merce was just high as a kite because there were audiences and attention.

SP. The reviews in London – you must know - were phenomenal in quantity and quality. And there were a couple of them I just thought were classics. They caught what was so important about the work. I can’t remember his name now, one guy in particular, he was not a dance reviewer, he was a painting reviewer. So he was there because of Rauschenberg, probably.

Anyway, there was some great writing. And Lew Lloyd <Cunningham company manager and executive> was high as a kite.

AM. He always said that the moment the curtain went up at Sadler’s Wells – I don’t know whether it was “Suite”, it might have been “Suite” – the moment it went up, “We just knew we were being looked at as never before.” Amazing. It makes me very proud of my compatriots! <Laughs.>

SP. Honestly, such a great response to the work. We’re talking about the Beatles and the Stones. A period when Britain was erupting itself with creativity, with energy and with a new way of looking at itself.

And the Cunningham company work was not just shit work – it was not just Dada Zen whatever. It is coherent – it is extraordinarily developed, to have a kind of rationale and logic, if you open yourself up to the vocabulary that Merce used. (Which is limited, but all dance is limited. There is no dance technique that is not a limit on human movement. That’s the point, in a way.) So, you know, here was something, and I don’t know what, Britain’s take on its own ballet and I don’t think it really had much modern dance at that time, did it? In ’64?

AM. No, that was the wakeup year. Robin Howard decided then to bring Martha Graham movement to London. The Sixties was when it <British modern dance> really happened: nothing serious had happened before.

SP. So a moment when - And especially because it <Cunningham> was so balletic. It must have made it more amenable.

AM. You think so? I don’t know why <that aspect> hadn’t hit New York before. You’d think it was enough like Balanchine –

SP. John Martin.

AM. But even so both Paris and London – London I think above all - just “got” Merce. I remember seasons at Sadler’s Wells, I won’t say always sold out at the beginning, but in the two-week season, by the <season’s> end every seat would be packed, everybody needed to be there, with a very receptive atmosphere, every night. But the first time I went to see the company in New York <City Center>, the big theater was half empty, throughout the season. It broke my heart….

14.

AM. So tell me why you left.

SP. Well, because of the problems in the company. SoSweden, where things got really angrily obvious, was followed by I think by more – Poland, Czechoslovakia, certainly India, Thailand, and Japan. And all of that – I was in pain for the company.

Also I mentioned popping my head up in that prompter’s box – Poland I think it was – it was a canvas covered stage. People were dancing, and the layer of dust was coming out from underneath this canvas and into the prompter’s box. And I got a chest infection, which was not cleared up for some months, all the way through the rest of the tour. And I danced everything until I got to Japan, when I started feeling so weak, I finally went to see if a doctor could help me. I got Vitamin B shots and things like that, and I was told not to dance. Which I mentioned to Merce, and so I missed one performance.

But it may have been four months, certainly three months, there was no interest in my health problems by the company - not David Vaughan, not Lew Lloyd, not even Merce or John. I was struggling, and actually discovering a lot of things, like “Oh, I don’t have to use my twenty-year-old energy in that movement. I can do it softer. I don’t have to put so much energy out.” But it was a little bit like there was no system for caring about people as such in the company. Shareen Blair left the company for the same reason, when we were in Paris. She was couped in her hotel room for a couple of days, vomiting. Nobody came to see her. She was alone.

AM. I know Merce could be bloody difficult that way. I’m surprised at John, because quite often people often felt they could go to him when Merce was closed.

SP. Some people maybe, I don’t know. I certainly never would have expected John to be the one to go up to. I would have expected David or Lew.

AM. I loved David to pieces, and I knew him very well, but I suspect that he was, if this is the right word, infantilized by Merce and John.

SP. I saw him dealing with the company and I saw how effective he was in dealing with the company. In Santa Fe. Dealing with hotel rooms. When David had a – He was something of a martinet with the company. Is that the right word? Something he... He treated them as children. They reacted as children. I was astonished to see these otherwise mature people, sort of hop into a military-school situation…. I think it was his idea of how to run a dance company inherited from his British experience of dance. Dance companies are often treated this way and maybe some of them – you know – It is teenagers, and they have to be put in their place – I don’t know. It was not – I didn’t think it was dignified. And I didn’t think it was caring. I guess it wasn’t part of what David thought of as his job description. Or Lew.

15.

AM. Once you left the company, when did you start to look at it again?

SP. Really a long time. I’ll have to think about that. So I left at the end of ’64.

I may have seen them again in London. I was teaching in Dartington at that point. <SP here is probably describing a period in the early 1980s. AM.> And whoever the manager was at that point wrote to me – Oh I had been asked to do an article on the upcoming Cunningham performances. And I wrote a very positive remark about how beautiful the work <was> – for “Time Out”, I think. Anyway, the manager <Almost certainly Art Becofsky. AM>, perhaps taking note of this writing, said that they could get me in if I wanted to come. And I came. I think it was at Sadler’s Wells. And it was beautiful.

I know I saw two London seasons after I left. And this time in Santa Fe. The Santa Fe experience – let me just tell you that. The company had just come from St Louis, which is sea level. And then suddenly Santa Fe, which is around a mile and a half above the ocean. They all had all arrived in the middle of the night, and they all had the ‘flu, save for one of the main female dancers.

Next day, at rehearsal, it was stumble and strain. The performance was – I knew nothing of this at the time – I saw the performance and I thought “Well, they’re really a very good company and I’m glad I came. Something America could be proud of and all that.” But I was not moved. I came back the next night. They had pulled themselves together remarkably. They did an… Event.

And it was going along, and all of a sudden “Suite for Five” … I saw this guy, I saw him doing my steps. And I had this extraordinary sensation in my body, seeing – “This is the dance that gave me so many deep physiological questions.” There it was, being done by somebody who -he looked like he was having the same deep physiological questions. So Cunningham. So cool. So beautifully shaped, but without any -. Anyway, that’s what I saw, the realization that that movement was actually Merce. I’d say, in my experience of what I was seeing, there were three bodies involved: there was mine, there was the dancer’s, and Merce’s, making those shapes. Just physical jolt, a body blow. I watched the rest of the evening, absolutely transformed. It was transformed. I must have had some hormonal thing in my brain from this experience. Something happened in my experience of the dancing. Then the company stopped, and they came to a line all of a sudden and they bowed and the audience started applauding. The company ran out, and then back on for the line; bowed again; ran out, and the applause died. It was one of the greatest things I have ever seen. I’ve seen a couple of the Cunningham performances and –

So the audience got up and left. And I couldn’t move. I was sitting there - And I was weeping and smiling, and unable to move, and absolutely in bliss. I’ve never reacted to anything onstage, any performance - I ‘ve seen some things that knocked me out but not left such a deep – It had to do with my particular view and my experience of dance, but - I was a very special audience member - but boy!...

AM. Can you guess what kind of year that would be?

SP. ’86.

AM. Did you watch the company after that?

SP. Oh oh oh! City Center, the fiftieth anniversary.

AM. Oh right?

SP. What was that piece you mentioned -?

AM. “Interscape”. The fiftieth anniversary would have been 2003 roughly: did you go to see that?

SP. Interscape” was not the name of the piece. The one with the big scrim -

AM: “BIPED”

SP. “BIPED” -

AM. That was new in ’99, but it kept coming back during the lifetime of the company. One of his greatest successes.

SP. – that was good.

AM. It’s fabulous.

SP. Yes, wonderful.

AM. When you saw a piece like that, how did you connect it to the pieces that Merce had made in your day? Did you see the same kind of Merce, or had it changed totally, or what -?

SP. Very much the same. Very much – It remained connected to the dancers via classes, and a lot, a lot of work on movement, all those classes, gradually, and rehearsals. And he had some brilliant dancers. I really liked them.

And I’m not sure I’ve seen anything since.

16.

SP. …I love working by email. It’s so direct. I always have this impulse immediately to answer letters. So if I don’t get back to you immediately, so prompt me. Yeah, my impulse is – It’s very easy to do that, to respond immediately.

AM. It suddenly occurred to me during the MoMA season<of Judson Church dance, 2018> that this <area> is an important chapter for my book. You especially – I didn’t know I was going to get this big an interview. But it’s been fun, because I have totally different kinds of answers from people. I’ve spoken to Yvonne <Rainer> and Lucinda <Childs>... Yvonne – I think she sent me a few answers by email, but she said “Have you ever read a piece I wrote about Merce?” I said “No.” She sent it to me. It’s written like fiction, in the third person singular – wonderful, her, going through the memory of doing Merce’s classes.

The classes for Lucinda as well were the revelation…. I interviewed Lucinda, by phone, the day before Thanksgiving. I’d never met Lucinda, but everybody tells me I should have been ready for how she can answer any question in about two seconds: she just gives you incredibly succinct answers. The chronological stuff, absolutely there, brilliant. She’s not clipped, in a way, but it’s just there. Sowe did the interview in what felt like five minutes - it probably was a bit longer, but I thought “God, this is short!” <Among other things, Childs told me, as I told Paxton, that she had been a scholarship student at the studio around the same time as Paxton, when Cunningham said to her “Look, you’re doing work with Judson, you’re doing work with me. You’re gonna have to choose.” And she said “I hadn’t stopped to think of it that way”; and she said he put it so gently in fact that it was fine. Childs said this was a very important moment for her. AM.>

AM. And I said “Well, that’s wonderful. Is there anything else you’d like to say about Merce?”

She said, in that cool voice of hers, “Well, only that he changed my life.”

AM. I said “Oh, that’s great – can you say more?”

And she did; and she was very similar to you, she said “At that time modern dance seemed to be about trying to tell stories. You were trying to be happy or trying to be sad.Suddenly here was a man who was in tune with the abstract art of the day.”

SP. That was critical, that was critical.

I think he was post-modern. I don’t think any of the rest of us - The rest of us are post-Cunningham. I think he was really –

AM. I find the modern/postmodern distinction such hell, but I know he was the next generation.

SP. He really wasn’t modern.

17.

AM. What did Rauschenberg ever say about Merce’s work?

SP. He was so devoted. He and Jasper. And you know about the Phoenix Theatre, do you? … The Phoenix Theatre, on Second Avenue maybe. And I think Merce had been hoping for a Broadway season or something, or part of a Broadway season for the modern dancers. But anyway it fell through… Whatever the back story, I don’t know. And soJasper and Bob - who at that time were not a duo - got him that theatre. And they put on a performance, I think for one night <February 16, 1960>, which I was lucky enough to get into. And I think it had “Rune” and “Summerspace” and “Antic Meet” and maybe a solo, maybe “Changeling” or something.

18.

SP I wonder how much John or Merce knew about chaos theory.,

AM. I very much wonder. I know somebody <Nancy Dalva> gave Merce a book on Chaos Theory in his late few years.

SP. Chaos theory didn’t really happen in books until the Eighties, did it? <“Chaos: Making a New Science”, by James Gleick, was published in 1987. AM.>

AM. She never knew whether he read it or not. But I think all sorts of people felt – Almost as if he anticipated it.

SP. That’s what I’m thinking. And I’m wondering if the Zen/Oriental connection couldn’t have led him thinking to similar images or…. Wildly characterised expanse of stuffthat Buddhism… especially in <inaudible> Language suddenly goes into dangerous <inaudible> Chance is just a way of tapping into the chaotic.

AM. You put it so beautifully: how do you try expressing everything at once?

In some of his later Events, he wouldn’t have the Events just on one stage, he’d have two, three or five stages with dancing at the same time. And you couldn’t see all five.

He loved it when the company went to <the Turbine Hall of> Tate Modern in 2003: there were two stages where you could see each other <i.e. where audiences could observe the dancing on both stages>, but then there was another stage on the other side of a big stage barrier wall. The only way you could see all three would be if you looked up at the ceiling: which was so high up that, you could see all three stages but it was as if they were on the moon.

SP. There was a mirror up there?

AM. The whole ceiling was mirrored, that was part of an installation <Olafur Eliasson’s recently installed “Weather Project”>. It looked incredibly beautiful, with this huge sun...

SP. I remember that sun installation. That was –

AM. Merce was as happy as –

SP. Oh! With the yellow light? Wonderful!

AM. They did two Events a night, for one week. It pleased his mind totally.

SP. Yeah.

19.

AM. He got more genial with age. Did you meet him, talk with him, in the later years?

SP. I met him a few times. I felt he was genial. I also felt he was very reserved still, you know.

After John died…. This was in the era of faxes. There was a guy in Vermont, who was a New York avant-garde musician. Lived nearby where I live. And he tried to fax Lisa, my partner, some kind of “In Memoriam to John”. And the fax machine fucked up in a way that struck me that struck me as very Cagean. And the visual… It got smaller and smaller and fainter and fainter and fainter. And finally – It didn’t come to the end of what this guy Jeremy had to say.

So I brought that fax down to New York, on a later trip, andtried to give it to Merce. I went to knock on the door. His housekeeper opened the door. “Mr Cunningham was not at home.” So I said I had a present for him. And I think I wrote a quick note saying I thought it was Cage interfering with –

SP. – with the fax machine. It was in his place on Sixth Avenue.

Well, a few years later, I ran into him. And I asked if he had gotten that. He said “No”, and I didn’t believe him. And I didn’t know why he would say “No”. Something made me not believe him. Anyway -

And then the last time I saw him was in the year he died. He came to, I believe to Baryshnikov’s place for some performances that were heppening. I had been asked to dance, and ended up not dancing, for some reason. And then there was Merce…. And I remember I dropped downon one knee and I kissed his hand. There was quite a crowd. He deigned not to notice. So…

AM. I’m glad you did it. What a strange man.

SP. He didn’t necessarily want to share his emotional life with me. But I’m sure he had a lot of emotional life. I think that was clear from the situation in Sweden. His emotional life got, for the moment, too big for the situation.

AM. I don’t know if you know the Cunningham dancer Ellen Cornfield. She was maybe the first Cunningham dancer I ever met. She was in the company when I was <first> watching it, in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Andf then she taught at the same place as I did, the Laban Centre. We presented some Cunningham film evening to the students. She answered questions, and she just said, “I think Merce is a very emotional person, and his choreography is his way of dealing with his emotion.” It took my breath away. I’ve always reminded her of it, and she says, “I said that?” I say “Yes, you did.”

SP. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don’t know if it’s his way of dealing with it, but I don’t think he would have been well served by using his emotions to make choreography. But I don’t think they were absent. As the story with Carolyn and “Socrates”suggests.

20.

SP. And I do think he was playing roles onstage while the rest of us were supposed to be purely transparent. And I think he was definitely playing the audience and being characters and producing God know what.

AM. Do you remember what dances that was particularly true of?

SP. He made a new solo at the Phoenix. “Changeling”. <“Changeling” was not actually new in the 1960 Phoenix performance – it had been first performed in 1957 - but may have been receiving its New York premiere.> I think he was really demonic in that. I don’t know what a changeling is. I think it is something to do with <inaudible> maybe. A werewolf? He was really an abominable animal. I mean he could do that in his own work, but I don’t know how you could expect anybody else to to do it. Maybe with careful;choosing of a company, you could find someone like that, I don’t know. <As SP perhaps knew, “Changeling” had been reconstructed after Cunningham’s death for the Cunningham dancer Silas Riener.> But the people he got were Carolyn Brown, who was the world’s most pure dance spirit.

AM. That’s the most curious thing, because there were successors to Carolyn’s pure kind of movement over the years, but Viola <Farber> was a different kind of dancer. If you think of the beginning of “Crises”, she’s doing the slow développé while the upper body is going mad. The answer, I think, is that Merce wanted several different kinds of <creatures?> up there onstage.

SP. Yeah, yeah.

AM. Were you able to say what kind of species he could see you as?

SP. What an interesting question!

SP. No idea. No, I don’t know. I assume. I was naïve, much as he had been. Come to New York, much as he had. Working to dance. Willing to sweep the studio and wash the ash trays for a year, to be able to take classes. I would assume he saw me as a… young something.

AM. Thinking about the difference between Viola and Carolyn, how do you think he got Viola to be the Viola, and not just the pure Carolyn?

SP. I think they were both fully developed. I don’t think Carolyn could ever have been the kind of dancer that Carolyn had been. Carolyn, you know, has this dance background. Her mother was a dance teacher, Maine, some place, Massachusetts, I don’t know. She would do Denishawn dances for her mother while she was dancing for Merce. I would love to have seen her as a Denishawndancer.

AM. She has a photograph of several generations of that family doing Denishawn in her book <Carolyn Brown “Chance and Circumstance”, 2007>, but she doesn’t say much more about it.

SP. That would have been such a pleasure.

AM. Meanwhile she was idolising Margot Fonteyn, andstudying with Margaret Craske and taking Tudor’s classes. She sometimes writes as if she would have been happier being a Tudor dancer or a Royal Ballet dancer.

SP. I bet not, because she was a philosophy major in Denver, when Merce found her. I think she already knew too much….

@Alastair Macaulay 2024

Alastair Macaulay

Steve Paxton on Merce Cunningham, in 2018

Australian Jewels

The Jonathan Miller “Barber of Seville”, improving with age