Dancer/writer Judith Brin Ingber remembers the advice she received from Merce Cunningham. It was the 1960s, and she was thrilled to be in the modern dance pioneer's class, but the usual routine of standing behind the instructor to learn movement just wasn't working with him. Cunningham kept changing directions, and soon he was dancing directly toward his wide-eyed student.
"Use your wits," he said, passing her by.
Simple words, but don't be fooled. Cunningham, who died at age 90 in 2009, was a master of complexity. His deft use of chance methods dictated movement phrases in his 150-plus works. Musical and visual contributions by the likes of John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg were developed independent of the dancing, only to be revealed at dress rehearsal or on opening night. Story lines were nonexistent. Sound scores were whimsical or an aural assault.
"Part of his point was to make you as the audience member take responsibility for what you brought to it," said Leigh Dillard, chairwoman of the theater department at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University. "Other choreographers want you to see things a certain way. Merce was pretty open-ended."
Cunningham's troupe will visit Walker Art Center this weekend as part of a farewell tour. While the choreographer's place in dance history is assured, even those most familiar with his work will be reminded of how it both delights and confounds.
"Nothing else looks like what he does. I really think Cunningham's an acquired taste," said Twin Cities arts writer Linda Shapiro. In the 1980s, she and Dillard ran New Dance Ensemble, a troupe influenced by Cunningham.
"I didn't love all his pieces the same," said his longtime friend Sage Cowles. "I was just eager to see it because I knew I'd be seeing a mind at work He'd show me what was interesting to him at the time."
Cunningham's creative process relied on keen observation. "He went at his work full of curiosity about how people move, how animals move," said Cowles. " That interested him until the day he died."
