Still Life by
Exhibitions / Still Life / Merce Cunningham - text by Tacita Dean
Presented for the first time in Europe, Merce Cunningham Performs STILLNESS... (2008), is a series of six films in which the avant-garde choreographer - portrayed in life size - dances to 4’33’’, the radical composition by John Cage that consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
I did not know what to expect when I asked Merce Cunningham if he would perform something to John Cage’s composition, 4’33”. I knew it was an audacious request; Merce was in a wheelchair and turning 88, and was less willing to appear in front of a camera than he had been. But he was a still dancer, and when a dancer gets the call he can respond to, he will nearly always come back on stage, and he did.
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Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 by Tacita Dean 1/3
(six performances; six films), 2008
six 16mm colour films with optical sound
Merce 1- 5 min 9 secs, Merce 2 – 5 - min 3 secs)
Still from filmCourtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York and Frith Street Gallery, London -
743
Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 by Tacita Dean 2/3
(six performances; six films), 2008
six 16mm colour films with optical sound
Merce 1- 5 min 9 secs, Merce 2 – 5 - min 3 secs)
Still from filmCourtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York and Frith Street Gallery, London -
744
Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 by Tacita Dean 3/3
(six performances; six films), 2008
six 16mm colour films with optical sound
Merce 1- 5 min 9 secs, Merce 2 – 5 - min 3 secs)
Still from filmCourtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York and Frith Street Gallery, London
We set up in the smaller of his dance studios on the 11th floor of Bethune St, where his company has been for many years. It was shabby and well loved, and the room had the energy of working dancers who had left their traces as handprints on the mirror wall. The urban hum of New York was like white noise beneath us, and there was a piano accompanying the dancers next door.
There was no rehearsal, no trial run. I was like any other member of an audience on the first night. Merce sat on a chair in front of the mirror. John Cage wrote 4’33” in three movements and for each movement, Merce held his pose. Using a stopwatch, Trevor Carlson, the company director, signalled the last five seconds by putting up his hand for Merce to see. Like a bird of prey, Merce perceived this without gesture, broke his pose and then resettled for the next movement. Throughout that New York afternoon, Merce performed for us. Our six takes were in fact six performances, and we alone were their public. Merce then named the new choreography, STILLNESS.
Each performance appears to hold a myriad of differences, even in its repetition. In one, he sits like Whistler’s Mother, tableau in the film frame. In another, he stares out at us through the smudges and the fingerprints on the mirror, with the head of a Grecian god, framed with wild curls. But it is always Merce, finding form again as a performer, poised, and resolved, and taking wry pleasure in how he could still hold his body or hold his body still, in the companionship of an old partnership.
Text by Tacita Dean