The sky crackled with lightning last night, the air rattled with thunder, and at home, peacefully, in his sleep, Merce Cunningham joined with the elements so natural to him: the earth, the sky, the water, and the air. Those birds he drew--they could fly, as he once could, and as, until his last week, he set his dancers to doing. He said recently that choreography had become, for him, "a habit of mind." We were talking, then (for "Mondays with Merce"), about how he could choreograph now that he could no longer move--as in like manner Beethoven composed when he could no longer hear.... As movement was taken from him, his dancers gave it back to him. So direct, their process with Merce: thought into movement, with nothing intermediary. These past months, he was tired; but he was game. He never stopped laughing, at himself as much as anyone or anything. To the end he was gallant and courteous with visitors, and clear. Always clear, like those green eyes that could look as blue as the sky on a cloudless day. I asked him this: "Merce, how is it that without music, without narrative, and with your using chance procedures to remove yourself, to keep from imposing your personality on the movement, that your dances are so passionate?" "Because," he said, "I love dancing!"
copyright 2009 Nancy Dalva
photo courtesy Hugo Glendinning
