A big 'ole Merce event

(The Merce Cunningham event spills out onto the plaza after performances in two theaters, Saturday at OCPAC.)

My indecision on Thursday led to some fast maneuvering on Friday afternoon - and then hooray! I found a workaround to get to both Merce on Saturday and Compania Nacional de Danza 2 at another performance. I'm very glad I got to go see both!

Saturday evening's MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center was certainly an event: It was performed in both of OCPAC's two performance halls, starting with a brand new piece at the newly built concert hall, then migrating to the old theater for a recent but not-premiering piece ("old theater" is relative, the place opened in 1986). The event also took over the plaza between the two halls for a film showing and a student performance event. The whole thing really was much more of an event than a dance performance. Between all the business moving around between the venues, plus the the stuff they threw at us during the performances themselves - iPod shuffles, sounds, lights, etc. - one could barely pay attention to the dancing.

The first piece, "Event", was created specifically for OCPAC's new concert hall. It's hard to say exactly what made it so unique for this space: as far as I could tell, it was just another Cunningham piece, but performed on a dance floor laid out over the orchestra platform. The music, improvised/composed by the musicians, didn't even take advantage of the new hall's acoustic environment: only the percussion was acoustic, while the violin's scratches were microphoned and a few other sound effects were pre-recorded. The score was really more of a soundscape behind the dances, which made the dancing look like 30 minutes of exercises. The movement was a classical, balletic use of the body and positions, but grounded, with arms stretched out and hands flattened out. I'd describe it as typically Merce, based on watching this video. There was lots of partnering and balances. And really a lot of this dance looked like the dances above, except the music was even more spare.

What the venue did provide, though, was the spectacle of the space. With the concert hall's undulating walls and the audience seated around the stage in a forum style, it looked like we were holding court over the dancers. The dancing wasn't staged in the round - it faced out like a traditional concert dance piece - but still it was fun seeing the dance surrounded by people, with lighting and technical like lighting also exposed.

(Out on the plaza at intermission.)

At intermission, everyone filed out of the concert hall and gathered on the plaza between OCPAC's two theaters, where they projected Cunningham's film "Beachbirds for Camera" onto the side wall of the old hall. (YouTube clips of the film here and here.) The John Cage score was performed live by muscians on platforms at opposite corners of the plaza. Trouble is, the music is so subtle and near silent at most parts that it barely registered as music in the outdoor space. Everyone was milling around, talking, trying to figure out what was going on. Plus, a TV crew was going around interviewing people. So the film seemd like it was a big silent film, and people started to get bored. The crowd got more and more sparse as people gave up on the film and wandered into the old theater for the second part of the performance.

The old theater is a traditional proscenium house that houses all variety of ballet and Broadway type performances. This piece was called "eyeSpace" and the audience was given iPod shuffles for rental - or you could do what I did, which was download the music beforehand from the Merce Cunningham web site and bring it on your own iPod. The music was seven tracks by Mike Rousel from his album "International Cloud Arias." And we were all instructed before the performance by a techie to set our iPods to shuffle and play them during the show. When he told us to start our iPods together, the lights went down, the curtain went up and the dancing began.

To my untrained and distracted eye, the dancing itself looked just like the other dancing in the concert hall. Except this time it was on a traditional stage with a pink backdrop that had big, bold sprinkles all over it. With our iPods plugged in and earphones on our heads, every member of the audience (that was participating) was isolated in his/her own aural environment. This concept is interesting enough in and of itself: so much of going to the theatre is feeling like a part of a communal audience. The audience is perceived both through the sight of all the people around you, but the sound of hundreds of people buzzin around you and applauding together. For me, getting shut off in my old wound world was a somewhat unnerving since I could still see everyone, but my mind had me keeping to myself because I was listening to headphones.

The sound from our headphones wasn't the only sound in the house though: on the auditorium's speakers, they were playing a roar of streetnoise. There were trains passing by, choppers and planes overhead, wind rushing past. As songs on my iPod faded out and transitioned into others, I could hear the roar in the auditorium, and I occasionally took off my headphones to listen to the roar as well.

And the dancing? Oh yeah, that was going on, too. Considering that the music had virtually nothing to do with the dancing - we were all listening to something completely different, since the iPods were shuffling differently - and the sound in the auditorium was loud a roar, I was barely paying attention to the dancing. Music in tandem with the dancing is a huge part of what I'm used to taking in with dancing - or if there's dance performed without music (like some modern dance, or sections of Mark Morris' Gong - I haven't seen the silent Robbins piece), there isn't a barrage of other noise sending my perceptions in other directions. So at "eyeSpace," I wasn't paying as much attention to the dancing. I know Cunningham's dances aren't meant to be about music, but more about the dancing, but I personally rely on music to keep me focused and on track. Perahps in Cunningham, the dancing and the order of the dances could perhaps be music of its own...?

"eyeSpace" ended abruptly. There was a duet that reached its conclusion, then the lights blacked out, and it was over. The iPod tracks hadn't even ended yet, and here they were bowing. This all felt truly random.

(The post performance: the dancers are somewhere in the middle there.)

Then we all went back outside on the plaza, where the projections on the theater wall had gotten more complicated and modern dance students from UCI were doing a Cunningham-choreographed piece on the plaza. Everyone gathered around to watch, while others formed long lines to return their iPods to iPod checkout stations - it was an interesting dynamic actually, with lines snaking around the crowds huddled around the performance space. Video cameras looking down on the dancers also captured live images of the dancers and projected them onto the wall above, along with moving light images zapping around the plaza.

Here are a few more pictures of the whole shebang outside. Sorry they're blurry - it was dark out.

All in all, it was fun wandering around between venues. Just keeping up with the event was occupying enough. Though I wish I was more into the dancing. Sure, I appreciated the obvious skill of the dancers - they're extremely well trained and really great movers - but my mind kept wandering during the choreography. My eyes were processing the dancing, but my mind was elsewhere: thinking of other music, about what I needed to do before tomorrow morning, about other site specific performances... Anyway, it was a definite event - packaged to the distraction of the dancing, but an event nonetheless.

It's nearly 11:30. I'll write something about CND2, which I very much enjoyed, later.