At the end of Merce Cunningham’s mesmerizing new “Biped,” as the 14 dancers were lined up and taking their bows, the audience in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s theater noticed another figure enter the stage from the wings. It was Merce himself, bent and bowlegged, his shock of white hair contrasting with his black suit. He walked stiffly and determinedly to the center of the line, joined hands with his dancers and, smiling, marched forward with them to a standing ovation.
How well he had earned it. Cunningham will be 81 April 16, but as “Biped,” created last year, demonstrates, his invention as a choreographer is ever renewed. Both classic and contemporary, he remains triumphantly on the cutting edge of modern dance.
“Biped,” as technically complex as anything he has created, is staged with dancers who move on a floor that looks like a portion of a large checkerboard. Different squares of the floor fade out and in with light, and occasionally the whole stage is washed with a bright white light or, in reverse, masked in darkness.
But there’s more. The dancers, dressed in iridescent, body-hugging costumes (and, for one segment, with loose, transparent jackets and trousers added), go through their motions behind a scrim curtain, on which are projected animated computerized images.
Sometimes these are color bars, or bubbles, or a shower of fragments. At other times, startlingly, they are dancing silhouettes or stick figures, originated by dancers with sensors attached to their bodies and translated by computers into spectral “motion capture” images. They appear unexpectedly, ranging from larger than life to mini-forms, and they skip across the screen, while the live dancers behind them serenely go through the bends, swoops and swirls of Cunningham’s choreography to the haunting electronic music played by three musicians seated in the front row of the auditorium.
The music is by Gavin Bryars, costumes by Suzanne Gallo, lighting by Aaron Copp, computerized animation by Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar. But the guiding force is, as always, Cunningham.
The other piece on the weekend’s three sold-out performances is an “Event,” customized by Cunningham for the MCA stage. “Events,” which Cunningham calls “not so much an evening of dance as an experience of dance,” are collages of pieces drawn from Cunningham’s more than 50 years of making dances.
The musicians, led by Takehisa Kosugi, use computers and instruments both ancient and new to develop a sound base of squeaks, scrapes, scratches, sirens and squawks. The 15 dancers, meanwhile, move to their own beats, weaving in and out of passages from such Cunningham works as “Winterbranch,” “Changing Steps” and the concluding “fast dance” from “Scramble.”
Cunningham himself will appear at the MCA in a free public “conversation” with company archivist David Vaughan from 5 to 6 p.m. Saturday. Reservations, which are necessary, can be made by calling 312-397-4010.
