Neil Greenberg on Merce Cunningham: "There's nothing else like it in the world"

 

Neil Greenberg with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company |photo Kristy Santimyer-Melita



Last September, Neil Greenberg came calling at Westbeth, at the 11th floor studio he called home from 1979-1986, the years he danced with The Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He watched some rehearsal of "Nearly Ninety," Merce's last work. He stepped out onto the floor and taught current company members a combination (see above). And he sat down for an interview for "Mondays with Merce." Film from that day is part of the latest episode of that series, all available free online at Mondays with Merce .

 Greenberg returned to New York City (he teaches now at the University of California at Riverside, where he's a Professor of Experimental Choreography) in late October, to dance in the Cunningham Memorial at the Park Avenue Armory--you can see film of that day in Neil's "Mondays with Merce," as well as film of Neil in his own wonderful choreography and in archival footage of the Charles Atlas/Merce Cunningham films "Channels/Inserts" and "Coast Zone."

Here's an excerpt from the transcript of Neil Greenberg's "Mondays with Merce" interview.

Neil Greenberg: I kept seeing Merce’s work after I left the company. Kind of had to. I mean for personal nurturance...There’s nothing else like it in the world.

Nancy Dalva:     And what does it give you?

Neil Greenberg: What does Merce’s work give me? It’s such a perceptually cleansing experience for me to sit in the audience and experience a Cunningham work...In any Cunningham work,  my perceptions feel so exercised, and it’s  that experience of walking out on the street afterwards and colors are brighter!  And all qualities, all experiential qualities are just more pronounced, more articulated. That’s the other thing that it does. It really articulates experience so that all of the component parts of any moment are all just so distinct   and heightened. You know,  it’s the thing that Cunningham told us as dancers: Make it as much as it can be without making it something else. So as an audience member out there, when I’ve seen a Cunningham work, life gets that way. Life-- without it being something else, without having to throw meaning onto the moment-- I can just experience the moment. A little more fully. A little .. well, just better. So that’s part of what I love about the work.

To see Neil in conversation, just click here: MwM 009: Dancing for Merce, with Neil Greenberg .

copyright Nancy Dalva 2009 (interview excerpt copyright Nancy Dalva and the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation)