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‘Cunningham’ provides space for the legendary choreographer in 3D – Metro US

‘Cunningham’ provides space for the legendary choreographer in 3D

'Cunningham' provides space for the legendary choreographer in 3D
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. 

Films about dance, or focusing on the performance of dance, are uncommon in their own right. Film and dance feel like both contrasting and conflicting mediums. One remembers the idiom circulated by Steve Martin about how writing about music is “dancing about architecture.”

Dance’s immediacy is all through bodies – their fragility, strength and arduous movement – portrayed and expressed in restraint, indignation, precision and rapture. This art fundamentally becomes not just difficult, but perhaps inadequate to properly capture on film. It’s a flat, fixed rectangle that barks light and sound from a fixed perspective. To expect it to pick up the grace and subtly that best comes from proximity to the performers, or at the very least sharing the room with them, could easily be a fool’s errand.

That “Cunningham” succeeds under these fixed circumstances is what makes the documentary all the more compelling. Merce Cunningham, the celebrated choreographer and dancer – who was consistently labeled as ‘avant-garde’ or ‘new dance’ yet refused to apply any labels to his own works – always refused to articulate the intent or mysteries behind his dances. His interest laid in developing the relationships with his dancers and the range of movements one could incorporate into dance. 

The inherent and elusive qualities of Cunningham’s work are on full display in stunning 3D. “3D is really good at working in space. I feel like the best 3D film will have no cut and for dance it’s really good because dancers can dance,” said director Alla Kovgan, making her feature debut. “3D works in space and Merce worked in space, you can feel the distance between people, you’re more concentrated, your brain works 30% harder. You allow yourself to watch and then you start seeing things.”

Cunningham worked tirelessly with a core company and “Cunningham” showcases his dances from 1942 to 1972, presenting them in chronological order. The earlier dances start with one or two people and we essentially see snippets. As the film progresses, we feel oscillating tones from his collaborations with John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg, and see the dances become more complex and run with a half dozen people for long stretches.

“I actually don’t think Merce ever engaged with cinema, you know, in a kind of big screen cinematic experience, I knew him as a thinker, you know, the kind of artist but not the human being, you know? And so this deep dive into the research of trying to understand who he was because as all you know, documentary filmmakers, we’re always trying to understand what people are ticking to make a film,” Kovgan said.

The film is intercut with sequences portraying his thoughts on dance, collaboration, New York and art as a whole, along with archival footage of Cunningham, Cage and Rauschenberg. Cunningham’s focus is honed, vibrant, revealing and contemplative. When at their early stage, the company toured the country and were once assumed to be comedians and overall not received cordially and with little financial return. The company relied on each other, having in common “their ideas and poverty.” In France, a cultural home to the different, challenging and experimental in art, they were literally pelted with tomatoes and eggs. Only in London, deep into his career, did Cunningham and his company get the type of recognition and success they deserved.

The constraints and delayed gratification in Cunningham’s career were mirrored in Kovgan’s creation of her documentary. Production took seven years and shot throughout Germany and New York, but with 18 days of shooting. Kovgan worked with the last company that worked under Cunningham directly, until he passed in 2009. The film feels like a channeled portal of Cunningham himself.

“I felt they never got to dance enough his work, unlike previous companies,” Kovgan stated. “I felt like we have to give them a chance, you know, they have to carry his legacy. It’s actually his legacy as much as theirs.”

The easiest thing one can do is compare “Cunningham” to the 2011 Wim Wenders film “Pina,” with which this production shares crew members. This is a skin-deep comparison simply because they share the same mediums. One wouldn’t side-by-side Audrey Lorde and William Blake. And while “Cunningham” doesn’t share the same overwhelming flourishes of emotion, color and candor of “Pina,” much of that has to do with the relative inaccessibility and restraint inherent to Cunningham’s work. This film isn’t for anyone with a cursory interest in dance and prefers art to be pretty and crowd pleasing. Much of this has to do with the source material – Cunningham’s work is complex, oblique, stimulating, inexplicable, with the “je ne sais quoi” and “mise en scene”-ness of it all that makes high art ineffable and not mainstream. The criticism that abstract art can feel “cold and passionless” only carries validity if that’s what we are informed we should expect from art – warmth, comfort and passion. When our expectation of what art and dance becomes more complex and nuanced, so can the returns. As Cunningham and Cage moved closer to a notion of art not having any expectations or clearly defined rules, we sense that the purest form art enables the audience to better see what is possible, and what has always been possible, and not just merely what we’ve been told is in front of us. And Kovgan and Cunningham’s dancers should be commended for highlighting an artist who deserves this exact type of focus and attention to detail.

Watch the trailer for ‘Cunningham’ below…