Part 2 of a 2-part series on Merce Cunningham's innovations in making and archiving dance, hosted by Patsy Gay, Associate Archivist at Jacob's Pillow. This episode features archival audio of Merce Cunningham and his collaborators David Vaughan, Carolyn Brown, and Chris Komar.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow Archives. I’m Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, and it’s my pleasure to introduce Patsy Gay, our Associate Archivist, who will be your host for this two-part exploration of Merce Cunningham and some observations related to his own Archives.
MERCE CUNNINGHAM: I, I just would like to say that I am all for preservation, but for me, I like making them mo, better.
PATSY GAY: That was Merce Cunningham, legendary modern dance choreographer, speaking from Jacob’s Pillow in 1993. This is the second part of a two-part series revisiting the July 9, 1993, Merce Cunningham symposium at Jacob’s Pillow in order to learn more about Cunningham, his art, and his legacy.
Despite Cunningham's protestation that he likes making the dances better than preserving them, he and his company made groundbreaking steps in preserving his legacy. Probably the largest of which was hiring David Vaughan as Archivist, arguably the first Archivist for a dance company in America. In graduate school, I had the good fortune of interning for a semester with David Vaughan in the Cunningham Dance Company Archives. Not only did I get to work with the amazing precious artifacts in their collection, and it was awesome, I got to hold Cunningham’s Kennedy Center Honors medal and the original manuscript for one of his books, amazing, but also it was also such a joy to work closely with the brilliant David Vaughan.
Working with dance archives myself now for some years, I have often been asked: what is a dance Archives? What are you archiving? In this talk, Vaughan clearly describes the broad range of types of material that comprise the Cunningham Archives.
DAVID VAUGHAN: We have, first of all, the print archive, for example, consists of programs that go back to not only to Merce’s first performances as an independent choreographer, actually I have very few programs of his performances with Martha Graham. But I do have a program of a performance he did in 1934 when he was still a high school student with his first teacher, Mrs. Barrett in Centralia, Washington, the small town where he was born. And, which is an important document because Merce still talks about Mrs. Barrett. Then there are clippings that also go back to, certainly go back to when Merce was at the Cornish School in Seattle in the late 30s, where he started, first started his formal training in dance with Bonnie Bird at the Cornish school which made him decide to become a dancer. He had gone to Cornish with the idea of being an actor. Then we have photographs which go back to, well, Merce’s, the earliest photographs I have probably go back, actually I do have, no I have got, I have some photographs I got from Bonnie Bird of dances she choreographed at Cornish. The photographs, the photographic archive I’m afraid in the early years is rather spotty because in those days there wasn't always money to have, to have, to employ a professional photographer. Or there wasn't anybody around with a camera the way in, in the early 70s that wonderful thing happened when Jim Klosty who was also here this afternoon, traveled with the company and made that fantastic photographic documentation of the company. The company’s life in that book he published you’ve probably seen called “Merce Cunningham.” Then the film and video archive again is very spotty in the early days. So we have some, some things from the, from the early days. But now we, as I said, we do try to make a, we make a rehearsal tape. And when possible a performance tape of posters as a, a large collection of posters, there's some other odds and ends of artifacts that come into our possession from time to time. Merce seems to win a lot of awards and I must say the film video people do too. We just won. The film, the “Beach Birds for Camera” just won the the prize at the IMZ festival in Frankfurt a week or so ago. And they sent us a very peculiar trophy, but, and also there was some money which was nice.
PATSY GAY: This wide range of materials is, in my experience, entirely typical for the ephemeral form of dance. If you think about it, a dance archive can’t really preserve the artwork itself like one could a painting or a sculpture, since a dance essentially disappears in the moment it happens. So, dance archives collect the non-ephemeral, secondary records of making and doing dance, like films, and programs, and costumes. But the Cunningham Archives wasn’t just about keeping stuff in boxes on shelves somewhere. For the Cunningham Company, this collecting and preserving also engaged directly with the art-making, which was both revolutionary and exciting.
DAVID VAUGHAN: What, what’s really important for us is the fact that we do consider that ours should be a living Archive. In, in, there’s more to it than just compiling a lot of information about the past, though that is of course an important function. But because Merce himself has always been so involved with the present and the future, we feel that we all also must involve ourselves that way. As you probably realize, Merce is and has been for the last few years in an extraordinarily creative phase. I mean, he's, he makes as many as four new works a year. And, so there is this continual excitement of new work being made. And, and we feel that we, in our way, we are involved with that.
PATSY GAY: And in turn, the materials of the Archives fueled the activities of the Cunningham Foundation and the Company too.
DAVID VAUGHAN: A very important part of the foundation now is, is what we call the RUG, the R-U-G. The Repertory Understudy Group which is a group of, of advanced students who are taken in as apprentices to rehearse very often along with the company and also to learn works from the past. Chris Komar and Robert Swinston are in charge of the RUG so that they the the works from the past exist on the bodies of those dancers as far as possible a lot of the time. Meg Harper, a former member of the company, is now a kind of head of the faculty at the studio. And she teaches workshops, in repertory workshops, and so that she's always, always down in the archives looking, researching a work from the past. At the moment she’s...
PATSY GAY: Like the Repertory Understudy Group, The Cunningham Company, in addition to performing new works, would revive and restage past works by Cunningham. This involved researching in the Archives to find photographs, reviews, lighting plots, costumes, and all the other documentation that was made of a specific work when it was previously performed. Video or film of dances are the most important artifact for restaging and re-embodying past works. Here Carolyn Brown and Chris Komar, members of the Cunningham Company from different eras, discuss video’s role in restaging works.
CAROLYN BROWN: Now I thank God I never was involved in all the stuff that, that Chris is doing. I never had to learn anything off a videotape. And I feel like a really old foggy in the sense that I just am incredibly grateful that I learned every single step I ever learned from Merce. I didn't learn a single step from anyone else. So it's all transferred from the choreographer to the dancer. And I have not had to experience what younger dancers in every company I believe, every company today works this way with videotape.
CHRIS KOMAR: Well, it's a lifesaver now and a time saver.
CAROLYN BROWN: Right.
CHRIS KOMAR: And a frustration saver. When new, new company members come in, quite often we'll have them start early, looking at tapes and getting a sense of the piece and learning steps. Even if they learn it wrong, at least they know, they learn something about what they're supposed to do and where they're supposed to be. Then you can work with them with the other people in the company. Otherwise, you have all these people standing around while one person is learning a half-hour piece, which is very complicated and very difficult to learn. And we've since since we've had our Repertory Understudy Group for about the last 10 years, I think, about 10 years. They learn off the videotape, while the comp, Company’s in the big studio rehearsing, the understudies are in the small studio looking at videotapes and learning dances from that. And then as Director when I go and help them and clear up things that they're doing wrong and etc, etc. So that by the time they get into the company we have two new company members, whose first performances is with us here in Jacob's Pillow. And, opening night, our, [Art Perkovsky], our Executive Director looked at the show and said, “I can’t tell there are two new Cunningham dancers in the Company,” because they have been working with us for so long and learning off the tapes and rehearsing the pieces that they look part of the Company.
PATSY GAY: For those who’ve never tried it, learning movement off a video can actually be quite tricky. It takes practice to be able to translate dance moves from someone else’s body on a flat TV screen onto your own body in three-dimensional space. And dancers today learn repertory so commonly off of video. Chris Komar explains this more.
CHRIS KOMAR: It’s not easy to do. Trying to pick something up off the videotape. I know like, sometimes when I see what they've done, I go “what were you looking at? Where did that come from? Where did that move come from?” Everybody looks at video differently it seems and they see different things.
PATSY GAY: But even videos—seemingly impartial documenting of a dance—are not perfect records. Perhaps the video captured a performer making a mistake or omitted something important that was hidden from the camera, out of frame maybe or behind another dancer’s body. Cunningham addressed this when comparing the documentary value of video versus the documentary value of LifeForms software.
MERCE CUNNINGHAM: But video is, marvelous as it's been for dance, for dancing that way, the things you can't see on it. That's why having a notation this way is important. Because you can see, you turn this around you realize you turn the figure around and see it from him see it from the top, or the bottom, or from, from any, from any angle.
PATSY GAY: And beyond the technical limitations of video documentation, what about its ability to capture the soul of a work? Listen as Carolyn Brown and Chris Komar discuss their feelings about the necessity and the limitations of learning dances off video.
CAROLYN BROWN: I think what's lost is an essence and a spirit of the initial creative charge in Merce which he is passing on. And, but this is happening with every, every, every, everything. It happens with “Swan Lake,” it happens. It happens all the time. But I think because modern dance is such a personal idiosyncratic form that Merce is always developing movement, exploring as you'll understand later today when he talks about the LifeForms project. He's always researching, he's always trying to find something new and different that he hasn't known before. It's a different time. You know, I feel like a truly old foggy. When Chris talks about time, he talks about time, we had time on our hands, we performed two and a half times a year once. We had a half a performance, we worked all year round, there was time to spare.
CHRIS KOMAR: time to teach, time to learn...
CAROLYN BROWN: time to do everything. I mean, there are a lot, when I hear what they do...
CHRIS KOMAR: and now we don't have that.
CAROLYN BROWN: They don’t have that kind of time.
CHRIS KOMAR: we don’t have that kind of time.
CAROLYN BROWN: You know, and, and Twyla works in exactly the same way that. And it’s the only way.
PATSY GAY: For those who are unfamiliar, Twyla Tharp is a downtown dance icon who’s toured the world with her postmodern dances, crossing into the genres of Ballet and Broadway too.
CAROLYN BROWN: And also Merce is, is, Merce is in his late 70s now, and when I was working with him, he was, when I started, he was in his 30s. He was with energy to spare. He wanted to dance so badly and he had no place to do it. So it poured out in a studio, in a class, his creative energy, the, those people and I see a couple that were at Connecticut College in those four years we were there. The applause after those classes was deafening because he danced every step with us. So he, he because he didn't get to perform he performed in class. So that energy, that passion that spirit, was, was like a transfusion to his dancers. And he can't do that now. It has to be different. And I think as a choreographer he's developed astoundingly, this year’s three pieces are so brilliant that, it's a different time. You know, I just feel very fortunate I was there then.
PATSY GAY: These conversations so clearly outline the necessity and value of maintaining Archives and the use of video documentation in keeping dances alive, but also the value of experimental technology like LifeForms and the important power of body to body transmission between choreographer to dancer, and dancer to dancer as well.
Even 25 years later, all of these elements are still working to keep the legacy of Cunningham alive. Though Vaughan is no longer with us, the Cunningham Archives lives on, now at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts where all the photos, videos, choreographic notes, etc. can be accessed by researchers. Though Cunningham is also no longer with us and the Cunningham Company has disbanded, The Merce Cunningham Trust still facilitates a network of teachers and stagers, mostly former Cunningham Company members, who still impart the technique and repertory of Cunningham through their teaching and restaging onto another generation of movers.
So often I find that documentation and preservation in the dance field are discussed as divorced or even antithetical to the creative process. I hope that these conversations from the past have shown how integral archiving can be to art-making in a living Archives. And the symbiotic connections that archival record and embodied memory can have with each other during an artist’s life and beyond. While the acts of collecting, organizing, describing, and preserving archival collections can be hugely daunting, just because something is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. In fact, maybe it means you should do it. And here, I’ll let Cunningham himself have the last word, telling a story about the value of doing something that’s difficult. For him, that’s in relation to his choreography and his work with Thecla Schiphorst and the 3D choreographic computer program LifeForms discussed extensively in part one of this podcast. But I think it can apply to all of us in our own endeavors whether it’s in archives, in art, or in our own lives.
MERCE CUNNINGHAM: I have a story about that. When we were at Black, Carolyn and Marianne, when we were all at Black Mountain College many years ago, I was, had made a solo for myself, which was very complicated. I had worked out the movements, different movements for the hands, the head and the body and the feet, all separate in a sense, the way with the computer now. But it's not as complicated this, but, but incredibly difficult to do. The feet were doing one rhythms and the hands a different something, and all, and the continuity had been made using chance operations. So I was struggling to do this, simply to learn what came next, much less than to do it. And it was to, the music that went with it was a piece by Christian Wolff, a piano piece. Well, David Tudor was at Black Mountain with us, and he was going to accompany this piece amongst others, but he was busy working on a, a program of piano music that he was going to play. So I didn't like to ask him to come very often to rehearse. But one day I asked him if he would come and David, he came and sat down and we tried this. He was playing the piano and I was struggling to do this dance. And it's just impossible. And I tried and I got a little bit and it wouldn't work, and a little bit. And finally, I sat down sort of in despair. And David looked at me and he said, “well, it's clearly impossible, but we're going right ahead and do it anyway.” So that’s what you do. The result is that to find out something you didn't know about, even on the things that come up on this. That, and I remember one coming up, and I think it was Tekla, who said over to, “can’t, one can’t do that.” And I looked at him and I said, “oh, yes, you could if you had help.” So, you see, if you, instead of saying no, if you could try and say yes, you find out something more. Anyway, that's the that's the sort of way I worked. I, I must say it isn't easy, but, but I think it's in the, on the whole, more interesting.
[Music begins, composed, and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob’s Pillow, we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, and of course, through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon - either online or onsite.