Merce Cunningham, Summerspace
Notes on an unforgettable piece and my adventures in dance
This week I attended my first ballet class in over twenty years. When I was very small, my mother enrolled me in ballet class and haven’t returned to practicing dance since my abrupt withdrawal. I wish I knew the origin story of how/why I was enrolled in ballet. I can’t recall expressing an interest way back then (wouldn’t it be great to have an external memory hard drive?), but I did love to jump, twirl, and dress up any chance I could. Maybe it was an effort put forth by my mother to have me interact with other children my age, as an only child I mostly spent time with older folks which I honestly didn’t mind (I thought most other children were gross and going to daycare when my parents were at work was my personal hell). Unfortunately, my career as a prima ballerina was cut short because I was painfully shy. One performance stands out in my mind vividly: it was an evening, a crowd of parents sitting in rows of chairs beamed as they awaited their tiny dancers to put on first show of hopefully many more, I steadily made my way out to the floor with my class, and instead of getting into first position I locked eyes with my mom and ran into her arms. That was the end of that. Looking back, I empathize with my smaller self. Being in any amount of spotlight is intimidating, but I wish I had the courage to keep dancing.
As I grow older, some of the decisions I make have been to rectify others from my past. Learning ballet is one of them. I remember when I would go into my closet and open up my rigid, vinyl ballet bag with a special compartment for my shoes and wished its contents were being put to use. Since moving to New York, I have been inspired to put on my dancing shoes again. Living here has provided me with the access to see live performances that I was never able to attend when I lived in the culturally barren desert that is Las Vegas. Each season, I attend at least one performance by the New York City Ballet. I have also become their unofficial spokesperson for their $30 for 30 program that grants $30 tickets for a week of performances to individuals 30 and under (if you fall into this category, I implore you to sign up before the winter season begins).
In 2019, I saw a performance of Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace that left an indelible impression on me. I have never seen a performance that measured up to this level of formal whimsy since. Summerspace was originally performed by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut on August 17, 1958 and entered the NYCB repertoire on April 14, 1966. The score was produced by both Cunningham and Morton Feldman, in which they nearly replicated the sonic environment of a sunny day in the park. Piano keys sing and chirp like birds and the bass rolls in like thunder, the movements throughout the duration of the piece are precisely attuned to this imagined environment. Arms are angled to form wings as the dancers take flight across the stage, ascending and descending in time with the score. As Cunningham was constructing this work, he began to see the rhythms of the season emerge, leading the title to read as a pun for both “summer’s space” and “summer’s pace.”
For further immersion in bringing the outdoors into the theatre, Robert Rauschenberg designed both the set and costumes while calling to mind the vivid brilliance of a full garden in summertime. When the curtain lifted to reveal the landscape conceived by both Cunningham and Rauschenberg, it reminded me of the lineage of landscape depictions in modern art. I felt I was looking at a pure abstract rendering of a version of Monet's famous garden at Giverny, clusters of pointillist brushstrokes vaguely mapping out the scenery. The dancers’ unitards nearly camouflage into the backdrop, further taking on the characteristics of the species they are mimicking.
This isn’t on the NYCB calendar for the Winter or Spring season, but if it returns in the fall I highly recommend heading to Lincoln Center to see it. Until then, I’ll be in the studio and in my apartment working on my form. In class, the teacher mentioned the Martha Graham quote where she says, “It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.” Here’s to hoping my dancing dreams are fulfilled when I’m 41!