Merce Beaucoup

SPOTLIGHT

dance is the art of the present tense, and there are moments, as Merce Cunningham often says, when dancing makes you feel more alive than anything else. This month, Cunningham is 75 years old. Exactly half a century ago he gave his first solo recital, in a little studio on 1 6th Street in New York. He has been making dances for more than two-thirds of his life, yet almost every piece in his company's current season is recent, and indeed two are premieres. It would be easy to speak of Cunningham as a past master. He is one of the last great modernists; he was one of the greatest male dancers of the century; he collaborated with Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns and, most closely, of course, John Cage; his work continues the spirit of Chekhov and Satie and Joyce and Gertrude Stein. But this is not how Cunningham presents his work or himself. He is not a museum piece or a relic. Utterly engaged in the moment, he experiments with computers as choreographic tools, and still appears onstage, simply because, it would seem, there is no place he would rather be. Will Cunningham's dances outlive Cunningham? It hardly matters. He likes to say that dance is as hard to hold on to as water in your hands. The important thing is to make the most of it while it is still running through your fingers.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY