radiohead and sigur rós compose the music to merce cunningham's 'split sides'

sigur rós

radiohead

photos by bernadette stallmeyer

curtain call

photos by caleb smith

merce, thom, jónsi

photo by richard avedon

jason kaiser
a beautiful night at bam!

it began with our mayor, michael bloomberg, introducing merce cunningham (gasp), who introduced jasper johns and bob rauschenberg (gasps!) among other folks...they rolled the dice to determine what would take place tonight. radiohead would go first, then sigur rós (consistently mispronounced throughout the evening). black and white costumes first, then color. lighting plot 300, then 200. one set of decor, then another. dance a, then dance b. bloomberg had lots of praise for merce, and mentioned that his kids think merce is the coolest guy around, because he got radiohead there. the crowd went wild.

they'd already rolled a die earlier that day to determine that merce's "fluid canvas" piece was the first part of the evening (so they could rehearse the change-over, merce explained). it lived up to its name. dancers flowed across the stage, accompanied by a very modern score that could have been mistaken for a song by matmos. intermission was wrought with chain-smoking and beer-guzzling by eurotrash, gender benders, culturati and indie rock kids anxious to experience the second half of the evening, split sides.

after an announcement about what had been determined by the dice rolls, the lights went down, the curtain went up, and radiohead began their portion. they were in the orchestra pit downstage left, with numerous laptops, a big patch board that had jonny looking like lily tomlin, and a giant sound board. thom was seen jumping up and down nervously before they began. lots of bleeps and blips and whirrs...a stuttering vocal loop that was hardly understandable (something about church, at one point)... the dancers in their black and white costumes were sometimes paired, sometimes solo, sometimes seemed like an army. the backdrop was large, heavy brushstrokes of black and white streaks. a disk was suspended downstage with similar artwork. the music developed in an organic way from slow and droning, to a rhythmic frenzy and back again. the lights slowly faded on a solo dancer, which seemed to signal radiohead to wrap it up, and 20 minutes of bliss ended to thunderous applause.

seconds later, the boys of sigur rós began a soft tinkling sound, the dancer exited, the backdrop went up to reveal another, colorful one (looking like broken glass and neon lights, or icicles), the lights brightened and the staged was filled with colorful pink/black/yellow costumes. the music developed into a more complex soundscape, with a glockenspiel or xylophone chiming, the sounds of knocking and murmuring, and a ratchet sound. what was evident here was how radiohead seemed to be immersed in their own world during their performance, but sigur rós was mostly facing the stage and watching the dance. the unison of the ratchet sound with the twists and stretches of two dancers elicited some applause and amusement. the music flowed from soft tinkling to more dramatic and back again for 20 minutes or so. the lights faded, the music ebbed, and the audience went wild.

given all the attention to letting things happen by chance, it was a one-of-a-kind experience. what i thought was most successful about the evening was that by separating all elements (music, dance, lighting, decor, costumes), each element was equally important. nothing was dependent on the other. there were many happy accidents that happened, when music and dance seemed congruent; a raise of the leg happens with the strike of a drum sound. but the juxtaposition of music and dance was just as interesting as the moments of congruency. leaping, running dancers might be accompanied by a clicking, rhythmless noise. what seemed to boggle us all was the fact that somehow this all happened. somehow a famed modern dance company got radiohead and sigur rós to write original music for them, and perform it live. one night in brooklyn. somehow the dancers rehearsed dances that were unrelated to the music (i have no idea how the dancers stayed together). somehow giants of modern art were there. somehow it all worked, and it could have gone 31 other ways.
(jason kaiser)

bernadette stallmeyer
color, or black and white? echoes of apocalypse, or whispers of magic? insularity, or interaction?

these were some of the dichotomies explored by the various participants in split sides, the newest dance piece choreographed by merce cunningham, which premiered at the brooklyn academy of music on 14 october 2003, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the merce cunningham dance company. for each of the major elements of the dance – choreography, music, dancer costuming, backdrops, and lighting – two possibilities are available for presentation. which of the two choices are used at any given presentation are determined by a roll of the dice immediately prior to the performance. total number of potential scramblings: 32.

choreographer merce cunningham is widely regarded as a major figure in modern dance. he was a soloist with the martha graham company from 1939 to 1945, and went on to found the merce cunningham dance company in 1953. from the mid-40’s, cunningham collaborated extensively with musician john cage, who served as the music director of the company from its origin until his death in 1992. together and separately they explored the use of chance operations in music and dance, and, as a corollary, the potential independence of music and choreography which serves as the concept for the split sides piece.

much of the buzz surrounding split sides, however, has arisen from the choice of the piece’s composers: radiohead and sigur ros. this seemingly odd situation arose when trevor carlson, company manager of the merce cunningham dance company (mcdc), suggested that cunningham consider these two rock bands as composers. astonishingly, cunningham and both bands bought into the idea. each band was asked to provide a 20 minute score.

backdrops for the piece were created by photographers catherine yass (color) and robert heishman (black and white). two sets of costumes were designed by james hall, and lighting director jim ingalls provided two lighting routines.

in the dress reheasal, radiohead performed first. they brought along their usual impressive technical armamentarium, including a massive mixing board, three laptops, an analog synthesizer-drum machine, an ondes martenot, and various samplers, loopers, and footpedals. during their piece, a moody extended, largely instrumental version of “the gloaming”, thom yorke predominantly manned the mix board, occasionally providing vocals, while other members of the band moved back and forth between the various synths and loopers. dancers were attired in sleeveless leotards painted in shades of yellow, rose, purple, and black, and performed against a background in abstract designs of soft greys and greens. initially a large group of dancers were onstage, moving more or less in unison. as the piece progressed, dancers worked in duos and trios, and occasionally solo. in one particularly striking segment one of the male dancers balanced precariously on one arm and one leg, steadied by one of the female dancers. as the piece wound down, the music faded into that of sigur ros.

in contrast to radiohead’s very large array of devices, sigur ros' visible instruments consisted of a xylophone, two hand-cranked music box devices that could be played forward for a typical music box sound, or backward for a ratchety sound, and an invented instrument fabricated by singer jón þór's father from pointe ballet shoes with pickup devices installed, which was used for percussion. sampled sounds of the footsteps of the merce cunningham dancers, recorded last month, provided additional swishy percussion. for most of the piece the mood of the music ranged from trance-like to playful, becoming darker near the end. dancers wore long-sleeved black, grey and white costumes, and looked like the artwork on the ( ) covers come to life. most of the piece was performed with dancers set against a shaded, predominantly blue background, made from massively enlarged color photographs. in some portions of the piece, lighting against the backdrop was reduced so the dancers stood out in stark relief. in this half of the piece, there was a tour-de-force solo by dancer jonah bokaer, a trio segment where a female dancer was nearly twirled around like a baton, and a particularly giddy duo where one dancer twirled around another. more on this later.

at the premiere, dancers and musicians all appeared onstage at the start for the roll of the dice. the order of the dance segments and music was unchanged. costumes were different, with radiohead playing for dancers in black and white, against a grey background, and sigur ros playing second, with dancers and backdrops in color.

as before, radiohead played the extended version of the gloaming, which seemed a bit darker on the second go round. this merged seamlessly into sigur ros twinkling score as the audience applauded following the end of the first segment. a few minutes into the dance, it became apparent that something very special was happening: sigur ros were raptly fixed on watching the dancers, anticipating their moves. during the segment where the female dancer twirled, orbiting around here partner in the pas-de-deux, an extended ratchety sound brought laughter from the audience, but it was a playful laughter of utter delight. later that evening when I spoke with several of the dancers, they commented that it was a radically new experience for them to have the musicians taking their cues from them, rather than the other way around.

at the end of the piece, the audience just exploded. there were some congratulations between various members of the two bands down in the orchestra pit, followed by five or so curtain calls for the dancers, bands, and merce cunningham onstage. a very special performance indeed.

at the curtain call, seeing merce cunningham made me cry. arthritis has forced him to walk with a cane. he choreographs pieces using motion capture techniques and a computer program called danceforms, using these to demonstrate movement to his dancers. it’s because of this that people around him never say “he no longer dances”, but rather “merce no longer appears in his pieces.” his will to dance is so strong that he will let nothing stand in his way to give us something extraordinary.

thanks to sandy sawotka, director of communications for bam, for the press packet and photo pass. thanks to martin johnson from newsday for the great quotes about merce cunningham. thanks to lighting director jim ingalls for talking with me about the production. and last but not least, thanks to bjorn, chris, beef, paola, and john b, who made all this possible.

laron wilson
prelude: although the performance was rehearsed by both bands and dancers together on the day prior to the performance, the individual pieces had all been previously and independantly composed and the 'rehersal' was purely for technical purposes only, such as photography opps, sound levels and band "hand-offs" if you will.

the "split sides" performance at bam (brooklyn academy of music) by the merce cunningham dance troup, accompanied by sigur rós and radiohead began promptly at 7:30 pm on tuesday, the 14th of october. there was much pomp and circumstance beginning with new york city mayor michael r. bloomberg giving a lavish introduction of mr cunnigham and continuing with the rolling of the dice to determine the order of accompaniment, lighting patterns, decor, and costume color. the dance order had been predetermined by an earlier roll of the die in order to allow the dancers to rehearse their entries and exits.

it was determined by the die that radiohead should go first, along with james hall's black and white costume design and one of two decor paterns designed by 18 year old kansas city native robert heishman and one of two lighting patterns by james ingalls. this would be followed by sigur rós 20 minute piece, the colorful hall costumes, and the remaining of heishman and ingalls's creations as well.

preceeding either of these artists was the "fluid canvas" performance accompanied by john king, orginally written and performed in 2002. this piece was meant to be played and performed as one piece, in contrast to the "split sides" presentation which have been created independantly. kings approach to the music was rather structured and repetetive albeit quite artistic in it's use of electronic sound effect instrumentation for both the rhythm and melody.

interestingly, radiohead picked right up where king left off, with high tech electronic beats and little by way of traditional melody. parked in the right side of the orchestra pit (stage left), surrounded by mammoth control boards and various computer and television monitors, radiohead, minus drummer phil selway, began their mostly prerecorded session with a synthisized "bell" driven light melody with a synthesized violin joining in shortly after. voice samples of a religeous nature were then layered in with the melody eventually being faded out and replaced by various forms of techno percussion. samples from "the gloaming" and other radiohead pieces were used intermittently creating a kind of dishevelled yet tight tappestry of sound. there was a definite oceanic feel to the piece, like the lulling of waves with the rise and fall of the tides. ominous and satisfying both at once.

other than providing some live vocal samples for insertion into the piece, it seemed that thom york mostly controlled levels during the performance. the audience thundered applause when the scenery changed suddenly after 20 minutes indicating that radioheads time was up.

as the applause died down, sigur rós was already in the beginning stage of their 20 minute offering. contrasting with radioheads imposing technological gadgetry surrounding them on all sides, the boys from iceland stood in a row before a table upon which were a xzylaphone, a cello bow, 8 ballet slippers on little mic'd posts, and two paper driven music box-ish creations. the also used a prerecorded base format. predictably, their sound was much warmer and more organic sounding than their electronic predecessors.

their melody was initially based around a simple piano piece that grew into a full sounding organ accompaniment with the typical sigur rós dreamy feel to it. there were almost inaudible vocal samples that hinted at being vaka-esque. the bow was used very sparingly on the xzylaphone to provide ambient tone, the slippers were massaged and poked and pummelled into a variety of rather percussive sounds and the music boxes were wound giving a 'clicking' sound that was precisely controlled by their winders in both speed and frequency.

the music pitched and rolled back and forth from minimal to full and back to extreme minimalism with sometimes barely a "click" or "tong" being heard. the dancers feet could clearly be heard scrapping and thumping the wooden stage floor as they bounced and flitted about during such moments. in another contrast with the radiohead performance, the band seemed to interact at times with the dancers as their sound effects often mocked the movements of the dancers, much to the approval of the audience which laughed and applauded at the playful interactions of the performers.

eventually sigur rós settled into a rather intense tribal rhythm using vocal samples and organ movement to establish the tempo as the dancers coincidentally seemed to respond with energy and movement. this energetic trance was eventually shattered by a shrill feedback that dissolved the entire structure into the static sound between the stations on an am radio band as echoes were all that were left of the piece. the curtain fell abruptly. the audience exploded and several bowing curtain calls later, which included all the artists, designers, and sheepish musicians with the exception of thom york who looked as pleased as though it were his birthday, the show came to an end.

post script: chris, bjössi, myself, paola and bernie all attended a catered afterparty which we were transported to at another venue. which party, complete with open bar and appetizers, included the bands, dancers, notable guests and even mr. cunningham himself who at 84 has probably seen better days healthwise. actually, thom york had some problems getting in as he didn't have the required wrist band, and the security guards didn't know who the @#!* he was. after a couple of hours of fraternizing, our crew and the rest of the sigur rós boys peeps, which included jimmy l. of "the album leaf" and robert heishman -decor artist extraordinaire, walked in the downpouring rain to a quaint bar just down the street where we either smoked, drank, laughed and or breakdanced the night away.
(laron wilson)

john emanuele
very interesting evening, started the day out at about 3:30 by the stage entrance talking to the dancers, who really seemed to love the pieces, as they'd performed them in dress rehearsal the day before. around 6...the boys showed up in an group of petrol guzzling chevy suburbans, lookin snazzy in suits (thom def has a fucking mullet). there was a surprisingly small amount of people around...

in terms of the show, the first half i could have lived without, though the true surround sound mix was dope, it did put me to sleep though (i was a bit tired to begin with, admittedly). after a brief intermission radiohead began their piece, which i would describe as reminiscent of the more recent electronic experimental period. there were no drums, no guitars, just drumbox, loops (thom looped his vocals in a really joseph arthur type way which was dope) and organ/theramin and johnnys patchboard. thom was manning the controls at the soundboard while doing many other things. i honestly believe it was only thom and johnny doing the actual work down in the pit. i liked radioheads piece, they incorporated alot of very interesting spoken word into the piece, and several grooves within it led thom to really start shakin it... the piece was more post-rock-esque than anything they've ever done, and fit nicely with the experimental dance. radiohead did a very nice job (though i think honestly it was mostly thom and johnny who worked on this). overall, a pitchfork 8.5/10

sigur ros i sincerely believe outdid radiohead however, the end of their piece included a sequence which really moved me, i'd pay anything to hear that again right now. their piece was created from loops, zylophone, a crank type device an odd type of percussive bongo-esque drum (apparently shoes now that i read this site) and some synth. georg and orri were switching off on instruments and georg was often going over to the soundboard to generate a new central loop for the band to build around. the sound of their piece was somewhat comperably to several songs on the soundtrack for the icelandic documentary hlemmur (which they released earlier this year). overall their piece really really impressed me, more than radioheads in fact. pitchfork rating 9.3/10
(john emanuele)

the new york times - general review
yes, merce cunningham invited two experimental rock bands, radiohead and sigur rós, to write and perform music for his latest choreography, "split sides." no, this premiere for the merce cunningham dance company's 50th anniversary gala at the brooklyn academy of music on tuesday night did not turn into a rock concert with dancers.

as many a guest collaborator has learned, there is no way to upstage merce cunningham, pope of the dance avant-garde, or his work. good sports, radiohead from britain and sigur rós from iceland were relegated to an atypical role as pit musicians. somewhat tame in the cunningham context, barely seen but certainly heard, they implicitly agreed that the emphasis was on the dancers onstage above them.

still, to paraphrase a line from "hamlet," what's rock music to merce or he to rock? the answer was not easy to find, although an aura of risk hung festively in the air as the evening opened with mayor michael r. bloomberg praising mr. cunningham on the same stage. past collaborators — including the painters jasper johns and robert rauschenberg — stood by and the musicians, lined up, looked amused and somewhat perplexed as dancers jumped up and down or fell to the floor behind them during the speeches. typical cunningham simultaneity and assemblage.

the program, part of the academy's next wave festival, also featured the new york premiere of mr. cunningham's "fluid canvas," which was followed by "split sides." both are visually stunning works enhanced by their lighting and ingenious décor, featuring choreography that continually transforms itself into what it is initially not.

juxtaposed, "fluid canvas" and "split sides" offer a contrast in how music and dance do or do not relate. whatever the intrinsic merits of the 20-minute score that each rock band composed for itself, the music sounded conventional to anyone used to 40 years of cunningham sound, which has ranged from high-decibel to virtually inaudible. melody has not been totally absent from cunningham composers, but they avoid the regularity in tempo and meter that even art rock bands like these still use.

sigur rós cheated a bit charmingly. with that band's lulls and volcanic rumbles and its handmade xylophone of toe shoes, it could not resist following the dancers. little creaky sounds began to accompany the movements of a convoluted dance trio, turning the dancers into windup dolls just as a duet took on a tinge of a music-box dance.

by contrast, in "fluid canvas," john king used his electronic score to give the dancers ample space to roam. dynamic shifts here have nothing to do with beats, and cunningham dancers do not dance to the music. like the modern-dance pioneers before him, mr. cunningham discarded the idea that one art form represents another, that the dance translates music.

pushed to an extreme, his own idea that dance and music should coexist as independent entities when they are brought together at a performance suggests that the dancers ignore the music and that any music will do.

yes, but how it all comes together is what finally matters. when mr. cunningham stages an "event," which consists of fragments of different dances, the music is often not composed for that choreography.

some of this mix-and-match idea was used in "split sides." after he was introduced by mr. bloomberg, mr. cunningham described how rolls of the dice by his past collaborators onstage would determine the order of two sets of artistic elements in "split sides." one roll (performed earlier that day) determined that part b of mr. cunningham's choreography would follow part a. another roll, by carolyn brown, his former partner, determined that radiohead would perform for part a and sigur rós for part b. rolls by sage cowles, a longtime patron, and by mr. johns and mr. rauschenberg, mr. cunningham's former artistic advisers, determined the order of two sets of décor, costumes and lighting design.

not entirely gimmicky, these procedures have much to do with the elements of chance that go into the composition of cunningham choreography. once composed, the dancing is not improvised.

similarly, a dice roll might pair robert heishman's green-and-white photographic images with part b of mr. cunningham's choreography rather than part a, as on tuesday. these images might then give a very different context to the dancing.

the rock groups will be heard on tape tonight through saturday. but the combinations of the production elements might or might not be different.

any review of "split sides," then, must be in the past tense. on tuesday the performance started out with seven dancers facing the audience in darkened silhouette. james f. ingalls's lighting — described as the 300 series (does it matter?) — suddenly bathed the stage in a bright glow. mr. heishman, a 18-year-old photographer who uses a homemade pinhole camera, suspended a large disc with a rim over the stage and offered a backdrop of green and white surfaces. in this hothouse atmosphere, with radiohead's initially light phrases and clicks followed by speech, wailing and thicker textures, the dancers concentrated on stillness, shifts of weight and, increasingly, springs.

james hall's white leotards with black markings made them look like grazing zebras. holding arms up, lurching forward, they broke up into smaller units. the formality was jarred when holley farmer walked in casually to begin a duet with daniel squire. when she bent her knees and dropped backward alarmingly, he ran to catch her. so much for improvisation. it was all a thoroughly precise dance, and radiohead's percussion made the single woman at the end look quite solitary.

part b began with mr. ingalls's lighting (200 series) burning through the suspended disc and revealing a new backdrop by catherine yass. her vertical blues and mauves made for painterly glassy drapes, a magical foil for the onrush of dancers in mr. hall's colored jumpsuits with squiggly designs. a repeated phrase by sigur ros contrasted with the fast and lively steps. a recurring motif had a woman hang by the neck of the man behind her. music and dance here made for humor, but also virtuosity (jonah bokaer's solo). four couples danced to a rumbling sound and spread out in a larger group, continuing to move as the curtain came down.

"split sides" is a difficult dance technically, and the entire company did more than admirably.

in "fluid canvas" (2002) the dancers had a more serene austere beauty. many wore mr. hall's shiny gray leotards, but some changed into purple ones as they expanded a head-cocked, curved-arm look into intricate duets (ms. farmer and mr. bokaer) and solos (derry swan). there was something right about a more intimate use of the motion-capture technology that mr. cunningham used to spectacular effect a few years ago in "biped." here, sensors attached to his joints produced an abstract film of his moving fingers on the backdrop. it was a hands-on touch from an artist whose imprint is unmistakable.
(anna kisselgoff)

the new york times - music review
radiohead may have cheated when it accompanied the merce cunningham dance company in "split sides" at the brooklyn academy of music on tuesday night. for most of his 50-year career, mr. cunningham has treated music and dance as simultaneous but independent parts of the performance. radiohead and sigur rós, the two art-rock bands that performed music for "split sides," were instructed to provide only 20 minutes of music each.

but the members of radiohead — in the orchestra pit with a mixing console, computers, a microphone and a synthesizer — were watching the dancers and, it seemed, responding with their own twitchy sounds: a little interaction despite the ground rules. that kind of empathy, inseparable from the music's more cerebral ambitions, has let radiohead and sigur rós reach broad rock audiences. their fans responded to the one-night-only live performance with a whooping standing ovation.

both radiohead and sigur rós are used to writing songs. freed to compose open-ended pieces, they turned to patterns and samples. both bands seemed to be thinking about mr. cunningham's longtime collaborator, john cage, who found music in everyday sounds. both pieces started out sweetly and ended in discord.

radiohead began with an austerely mournful electric-piano line and quiet chords akin to its song "kid a," soon joined by hovering simulated strings. samples of voices, talking about church membership, were looped to become rhythmic, joined by a hissing, boinging synthesizer. a drumbeat steadied the music into an abstract techno funk. that dissolved into another passage: low notes like tibetan chants below an otherworldly synthetic melody. thom yorke began singing wordless notes, turning them into loops and layering them into a pained choir. then a new spoken-word loop led into a final stretch of funk, hollow and ominous.

sigur rós used instruments made for the occasion, including one with microphones mounted in dancers' pointe shoes. its main instruments, though, were music boxes and the sounds of winding them up, contrasting the ethereal plink of the music boxes with an earthy ratcheting. they were played all at once, along with marimba and keyboards, to create a richly twinkling cloud of sound. eventually deep organ tones arrived and then samples — of mr. cunningham's voice. the music boxes gave way to rumbling and screeches of feedback, and prettiness was upended into noisy chaos.
(jon pareles)

the washington post
it was a once-in-a-lifetime evening -- a collaboration between an 84-year-old dance legend and two of the world's most adventurous rock bands.

and you knew you were in for a different kind of dance when you walked into the hall. on one side of the orchestra pit at the brooklyn academy of music's opera house, there was a soundboard approximately the size of rhode island. at the other end was a small wooden xylophone and four pairs of gleaming pink satin toe shoes, screwed into a rack, looking like mittens hung up to dry.

but despite the loud, wailing and sometimes quite lovely contributions of alternative rock bands radiohead and sigur rós, the merce cunningham dance company didn't really rock, and it didn't really roll. gurgled and boinged and yeeeeeearrrroooowwwed was more like it.

and in the end, as the dancers froze in their positions and sigur rós's ear-splitting whine crested, tuesday night's capacity crowd rose to its feet and whistled and roared its gratitude through at least a half-dozen curtain calls. but the one who seemed the most tickled with the evening was merce cunningham himself. leaning heavily on his cane, cunningham surveyed the multigenerational assembly that gathered onstage for the bows -- his slim, sleek dancers, the lighting, set and costume designers and the slump-shouldered musicians from both bands. fists jammed in jeans pockets, they seemed to be wondering what to do with themselves. but cunningham's puckish smile seemed to say, "we pulled it off, didn't we?"

as luck would have it -- and luck had a starring role on this peculiar night -- everything went according to plan. which is to say, there was no plan, and that turned out to be just fine. better than fine; amazing. wonderful. revealing and provocative. it had all the markings of a fiasco -- unrelated elements brought together for the first time only at the performance, their order determined by chance rather than cunningham's dictates. but once again, cunningham's wisdom in extending the performance beyond his own imagination was affirmed. chance was good to him, and he was good to us.

it was a fitting tribute to the cunningham company's half-century of revealing, provocative and deeply peculiar performances.

"split sides," as the music-phenoms-meet-modern-dance work was called, was conceived as a final event to mark the dance company's 50th anniversary, which has been celebrated for the past year. cunningham has been known for working with musical innovators, notably experimental composer john cage. and for the celebration, he wanted to collaborate with a contemporary experimental group on a new work. requests were sent out to the wildly famous british band radiohead and the lesser-known but increasingly respected icelandic group sigur rós. both are known for their inventiveness as well as an artful, individualistic approach to composition.

when both bands unexpectedly agreed to the project, cunningham decided to expand the work. he divided the piece into 20-minute halves, with separate lighting, costumes, decor, music and choreography for each part.

oh, yes, and he included one other little detail: chance. a pre-performance die-roll would determine the order of each element. the die was introduced with great pomp and circumstance.

"it's an understatement to say that this is a very special evening," said new york mayor michael r. bloomberg, addressing the audience at the program's outset. as bloomberg and cunningham looked on, a die was rolled four times, with the odd or even results setting the order of band (radiohead was up first), decor, lighting and costumes. the order of the two dance sequences had been determined earlier, to allow for rehearsal of exits and entrances.

among the celebrities onstage before the performance were artists robert rauschenberg and jasper johns. both have been collaborators with the dance company, and, along with cunningham, were brash members of the avant-garde in their youth.

as they ambled offstage, rauschenberg continuing up the aisle in a wheelchair, one couldn't help thinking of the old rebels and the new ones. and watching the performance, one thought, too, of how old and new looked and felt an awful lot alike. because regardless of the celebrity of the pit bands, the sense of entering deep into the unfamiliar in this spectacle was as acute as ever.

the curtain rose on an icy world of bright light glowing on robert heishman's photographic backdrop, an enlarged smudge in gray green and lacy white, like a close-up of frost on a windowpane. the dancers wore unitards, splotched black and white as if dipped in bleach. there was a tinkly ringing sound, but soon this was lost in the recorded voice of a sermonizing preacher. the voice was garbled and morphed into a rhythmic hum, faster now and peppered with bleeps and bzzzz's. the dancers, who had been moving in rapt, serene unison, sped up; they pawed at the floor with their feet, stuttered and skittered across the stage.

as radiohead's colin greenwood did his own dance, tinkering furiously with the lights and switches on his soundboard, the audio rose to a babble of bangings and splintered vocals. there was, however, no recognizable singing from lead singer thom yorke (though he was in the pit, in what seemed to be a supervisory mode), no guitars, no racing drums. this piece seemed to be a wholly computer-generated collage, meandering and unmelodic.

while the music raged, the dancers were unperturbed (one told me recently that it takes several performances before they even start hearing the music, so focused are they on the complicated rhythms of their own steps). they struck heroic poses with arms raised grandly overhead. two pursued each other in a kind of court dance, upright and crisp. with the music creating what now sounded like an interplanetary windstorm, the stage resembled a moonscape and the dancing seemed like shades of some old, proud civilization.

the second half was another world entirely, with the dancers in loose-fitting trousers of sherbety-soft rainbow colors. (both sets of costumes were by james hall; the lighting was by james f. ingalls.) catherine yass's backdrop harmonized wonderfully: made of layers of color transparencies, it looked like a smeary, upside-down skyline at dusk, tinted lavender, blue and rose. the dancing was fast-paced, mischievous and fun, with an almost carnival air. one woman turned a cartwheel in her partner's arms, another was overturned by two men, who then stretched her out between them like taffy.

add to this sigur rós's high, bell-like notes, low haunted-house rumbles (coming from the band's drumming on those amplified toe shoes) and the rasping of a windup mechanism, and you marveled at the great good luck that brought these astonishingly like-minded parts together.

some of it was more than luck: the musicians watched the dancers from the pit, and some of the happy connections between their sound and the dancing grew from improvising to the movement.

both bands played live only at tuesday's opening. a recording of their music will be played combined with the dance company's live musicians for the rest of the run (through saturday). the die-roll will determine a new order for each show, so how the other performances turn out is anybody's guess.

the evening opened with "fluid canvas," set to john king's "longtermparking," whose machine-generated rattles and whirrings were a perfect introduction to the musical styles to come. this work, however, was "set." nothing was left up to chance, and the sculptural poses and distant, self-absorbed gazes of the dancers had a static, frigid quality that was less intriguing, less stimulating to the senses than "split sides."

cunningham gambled on these bands, and on the rest of the elements, and on this night, at least, he won. questions linger: what will the work look and sound like with a different mix of ingredients -- the pastel trousers with the icy photo, radiohead's journey into darkness with the sprightlier dancing? will the young folks who flocked to this event return, and reinvigorate the cunningham fan base?

to at least one first-time dancegoer, the roll of the dice was a gamble that paid off.

"i really liked the way it shifts depending on chance," said lisa poggiali, 21, who had seen radiohead last week at madison square garden but was new to cunningham. "that might make me buy another ticket."

"split sides" will tour several u.s. cities after its run in brooklyn. it is not scheduled to be on the company's program at the kennedy center this spring, but the company expects it will eventually be performed in washington.
(sarah kaufman)

the new york post
introducing merce cunningham at bam tuesday night, mayor bloomberg got it right, calling the 84-year-old "the coolest guy around - he's even got radiohead."

the collaboration between the patriarch of american modern dance and two cult alt-rock groups - radiohead and iceland's sigur ros - was the much ballyhooed highlight of this 50th anniversary season of the merce cunningham dance company.

the program, part of bam's 2003 ongoing next wave festival, started mildly with the new york premiere of cunningham's "fluid canvas."

though it looked better than when i saw it in london last year, it's still cunningham-lite, more schematic than structured and generally lacking in both invention and inspiration.

yet with the world premiere of "split sides," cunningham hit a bull's-eye - it's a honey of work, one of his best ever.

it is a ballet built on chance - with two sets of everything: two choreographies, two scores (one by radiohead and one by sigur ros, both of identical length), two sets of scenery, two sets of costumes and two lighting plots.

all are used at every performance, but the order is decided upon by the toss of the dice: odd or even decides which score, choreography, scenery, etc. will go first.

radiohead - which performed its eerie phantom sound live, but only at tuesday's gala - won the toss, leaving the icelanders to follow with a more sonorous and plangent score.

possibly cunningham was expecting something more stridently pop. but what he got was wispy, agreeable alt-rock - with a few incomprehensible vocal musings from radiohead - not all that more audience-friendly than the kind of soundscore he usually uses.

music apart, cunningham has devised some striking choreography, full of beauty and quirks, its essentially classic form transmuted into a modern idiom.

exquisitely danced, it showed the old wizard and his young spellbound company at their dazzling best. happy birthday!
(clive barnes)

billboard
when couples in tuxedos are mingling amid 20-somethings in jeans and t-shirts at the brooklyn academy of music, you know something unusual is afoot. last night (oct. 14), that "something" was the presence of preeminent alternative rock acts radiohead and sigur ros, who were on hand to perform the live soundtrack to the world premiere of choreographer merce cunningham's "split sides."

tickets for the one-off event were snapped up in record time, despite the younger contingent of the audience's complete ignorance of cunningham's work (the bands themselves knew little of the 84-year-old choreographer before they agreed to participate).

indeed, the pairing was a strange one. radiohead guitarist jonny greenwood admitted to billboard.com this spring that the group was wrestling with how to approach the task at hand: composing 20 minutes of music the dancers would not hear until they first set foot on the stage.

luckily, that desire to throw caution to the wind has been gradually perfected by cunningham, ever since he began collaborating with future avant-garde composing legend john cage some 50 years ago. for "split sides," two different lighting, costume and choreography programs were created, with their usages to be determined each night by a roll of the dice. as such, there are a myriad of permutations for the work, which will be performed in the future with a combination of live and pre-recorded music.

early in the evening, new york mayor michael bloomberg saluted cunningham on the 50th anniversary of his dance company, noting "my kids now think he's the coolest guy around." with the dancers stretching in the background, all the musicians stood on stage as artistic luminaries such as jasper johns and robert rauschenberg rolled the dice to set the performance in motion. radiohead would go first.

a peek into the orchestra pit revealed this would not be an ordinary live score, as neither sigur ros nor radiohead had lugged in guitars, basses or drums. instead, sigur lined up four pairs of ballet shoes and miked them. also in place was a xylophone and what looked like an old telegraph machine.

on radiohead's side was the usual assortment of homemade gadgets and greenwood's enormous analog soundboard, which resembles the switching stations one would see telephone operators manually routing calls through decades ago. any number of laptop computers glowed from below.

when the curtain finally rose, it was to the minimalist strains of synths and droning tones, in line with the title track of radiohead's "kid a" album. much in the vein of the vocal looping pioneered by steve reich, the group then introduced snippets of what sounded like recordings of a religious call-in show.

as the music quickened with snappy electronic tones, it was clear this exercise was the perfect outlet for radiohead's fixation on the harsh, experimental dance music purveyed by the warp label. at times, the beat would drop out completely, leaving the looped voices and bendy synth tones to impart an ominous vibe.

something akin to frontman thom yorke's sampled voice and a "beat" formed out of a human breath then gave way to a tonal explosion a la the "kid a" cut "idioteque." only in the piece's final minutes did the dancers appear to be reacting to the music; otherwise, their movements were completely independent of the sounds filling the hall.

radiohead seemed a bit unsure how to finish things out, pumping in radio static and a buzzing melody, but falling back on a now-tired barrage of autechre-style sonic terrorism. there was no time for reflection though, as sigur ros immediately began fashioning dulcet xylophone melodies and ratchet noises. the dancers, their splatter-painted black-and-white outfits now swapped for something much more colorful, fidgeted as if they were toy soldiers coming to life.

in this setting, sigur's dark accompaniment seemed particularly at odds with the more lighthearted dancing (a trio of dancers literally hopped into the wings at one point). but on at least one occasion, the two elements achieved perfect synergy, as a female dancer whirled around her male counterpart in time with a prolonged crank of the ratchet.

the second half arrived at a handful of inspiring moments, with dreamy, sustained tones devolving into rumbling background noise and scary moaning. sigur ros also experimented with reich-ian speech excerpts, piping in what sounded like an overmodulated train announcement. with just minutes to go, the whole thing finally hit a rhythmic groove, the heavy bass notes uglied up by amp noise and abusive radio static. but the end again seemed abrupt, with the curtain falling while the band was still playing.

ultimately, it didn't matter, because the point was not to hear the reliably forward-looking rock'n'roll fans have come to expect from these two bands. it was to succumb to the nuances of chance; the sense that independent artistic elements can collide to form something truly original. on this night, they came awfully close.
(jonathan cohen)

spin magazine
èpercussion music is revolution,î declared john cage, the visionary composer and proto-dj who was also choreographer merce cunningham's longtime companion and collaborator, in an essay about modern dance. ètomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom.î

well, it's tomorrow, and to radiohead, merce cunningham's split sides probably seemed like the fulfillment of cage's prophecy. the group that has struggled so famously with fame landed a gig out of singer thom yorke's fever dreams: providing abstract accompaniment for a dance troupe from the darkness of an orchestra pit, pretty much invisible to the audience, most of whom wouldn't have recognized the band if they'd been busking outside the theater. most, but not all: a squad of somber radiohead fans canvassed lafayette avenue for a miracle ticket to this one-time-only performance, for which scalpers were getting $500 a seat.

the lobby throbbed with art-world glitterati and rubberneckers (èwho's that woman with lou reed? are he and laurie anderson finis?!î). onstage, new york's arts-loving, smoke-hating mayor, michael bloomberg, delivered opening props to cunningham, the 84-year-old high priest of modern dance, as cunningham's company warmed up behind him. meanwhile, radiohead and their icelandic prog-rock pals sigur r s stood squirming like kids at a school assembly. yorke, in a battered black leather jacket, black shirt and pants, and white sneakers, periodically cracked wise to bassist colin greenwood; one briefly imagined that the singer might actually miss being the center of attention.

per a dice roll, radiohead were paired with the first segment of the evening: cunningham likes to utilize chance elements, believing, as did cage, that music and dance should function independently in performance. the piece began with jonny greenwood's lonely electronic keyboards; bell tones and violin drones rose up, then bits of a religious broadcast, then yorke's wordless vocals, all looped and blurred. dancers in sheer soot-gray-and-white leotards twisted around one another, creating a gorgeous human geometry. only rarely, as when a woman repeatedly fell backward into her partner's arms -- recalling one of those psychotherapeutic trust exercises -- did gestures rise beyond the abstract. this was rorschach art, open to any interpretation. toward the end, as yorke pogoed wildly over a studio-size mixing board in the pit, you could see him indulging his own interpretation: that he was rocking the decks at the coolest dance club on the planet.

sigur ros created even more magic in split sides' second half, performing with an amplified sculpture (built by lead singer j nsi birgisson's dad) and incorporating mic'd ballet shoes and a collection of modified music boxes that often made the dancers seem like windup toys in a psychedelic window display.

when it was all over, fans seemed equally dazzled and puzzled ("i had no idea what the fuck was going on," confided one). it was a lesson in how bands can disappear almost completely and still take you someplace amazing.
(will hermes)

the new yorker
at the merce cunningham dance company's recent show at the brooklyn academy of music, the average age of cunningham's audience seemed to have dropped by about thirty years, and that is because the troupe, normally a rather egghead enterprise, chose to perform to rock music this season. cunningham was one of the creators of america's mid-century modernism, as, more famously, was his lifelong collaborator, john cage, who died eleven years ago. accordingly, the cunningham company, for most of its history, has performed to the sort of arrhythmic, ametric, amelodic ènew musicî that cage and his cohort produced: somebody making electronic static, somebody shaking beans in a jar, somebody mumbling into a mike. so when it was announced that the big new piece this season, the company's fiftieth, would be accompanied by two rock bandsÊradiohead, the very hot british ensemble, and sigur r s, from icelandÊthere was considerable head-scratching. were cunningham's dancers going to perform to something as normal as song? were they going to dance to a beat? why use rock anyway? trevor carlson, the company's general manager and the person whose idea this was, told the times why: to bring in people previously unexposed to the companyÊin other words, to sell cunningham to the young.

among the unenlightened, it turned out, were the bands. neither sigur rós nor radiohead had ever seen cunningham's company. (and cunningham, who is eighty-four, didn't know who they were until carlson told him.) thinking that at least one band would say no, carlson had sent both invitations at the same time. when, awkwardly, both groups said yes, each was assigned twenty minutes of a forty-minute dance. then cunningham, who makes his dances independently of their scores, went off to the studio, and everyone else sat around wondering what was going to happen.

what happened was that both bands, perhaps in deference to the great old man, didn't rock. they stayed in the pit; they didn't deliver a beat; they didn't even sing. they took a bunch of sounds and fed them through electronic equipment, just as cage would have done. radiohead's composition began with some burbling, then added a cello-like plaint, then the voice of an evangelist, then some whistling and panting, all of this heavily cooked by the machinery. sigur r s's contribution was more conventionally musical, in that its main instrument was a music box, tinkling sweetly, thenÊwith a great, rude gear-grindingÊbeing rewound, then tinkling again. here, too, there were other sounds: now a marimba, now what sounded like a dental drill. for the occasion, sigur r s also invented an instrument consisting of eight point shoes mounted on a base and fitted with microphones. occasionally, someone would bang this thing with sticks. the resulting sound was unremarkable, but it's the thought that counts. this is the sort of loopy idea that cage might have had. he once miked a cactus and played it.

cunningham, perhaps to educate his new audience, opened each performance with a demonstration of his work's primary structural principle: chance. he uses chance proceduresÊdice-rolling, coin-flippingÊto decide many things, crucial things, about any dance that he is working on: the number of sections it will have, the order of the sections, their length, their placement on the stage, how many dancers they will have. the fact that the choreography and the musicÊthe sets and the costumes, tooÊare created without consultation among their makers adds another layer of indeterminacy. for his golden-anniversary creation, cunningham piled on more layers. when he found himself with two bands, he seems to have thought, what the heck, and, calling the piece èsplit sides,î he made two separate dance sections and ordered up two lighting designs, two backdrops, and two sets of costumes. nor was any element paired with any other. everything would be sorted, by chance, before each performance. mathematically speaking, there were thirty-two possible combinations. the dance i saw on opening nightÊwith, in the first half, radiohead's score, cunningham's part a choreography, robert heishman's japanesy backdrop, james hall's black-and-white costumes, and james ingalls's lighting plot no. 300 (dark), and, in the second half, sigur rós's score, cunningham's part b dance, catherine yass's smeared-brushstrokes backdrop, hall's colored costumes, and ingalls's lighting plot no. 200 (brighter)Êmay never be performed again.

all of this is a little hard to get into one's head, and so, each night, the method was patiently demonstrated to the audience. cunningham appeared onstage with four of his company's eminences: carolyn brown, his magisterial dance partner from the fifties and sixties; robert rauschenberg and jasper johns, his longtime artistic collaborators; and sage cowles, his troupe's primary patron. apologetically, he explained that the order of the two dance sections had been determined the day before, so that the dancers could rehearse properly. but the sequencing of the remaining elements would be worked out now. carolyn brown stepped forward with a die, to decide the order of the bands. evens, cunningham declared, would put radiohead first; odds, sigur r s. as we watched her hands on a video screen, brown rolled the die and got a four: radiohead would go first. and so on, down the line, with the others throwing the die to determine the order of the sets, the costume designs, the lighting plots.

this was fun, and though cunningham has been rolling diceÊand telling us he was doing soÊfor fifty-odd years, it was still shocking, for it explodes the principles of order that we think of as central to art. would it be o.k. if the èode to joyî came in the middle of beethoven's ninth symphony rather than at the end? would it be all right if one of jackson pollock's drip paintings were reproduced in reverse?

it was at cage's suggestion that cunningham began using chance. cunningham's colleague paul taylor has written that the choreographer told him it started as an anxiety-management technique: when he got blocked, he'd roll the dice, and just do what they said. not everyone thinks this was a good bargain. witness the recent interview between cunningham and the art critic deborah solomon in the times magazine:

d.s.: there's already so much chaos in life. you turn to art to escape it.
m.c.: chance becomes its own order, if you choose to use it. instead of planning a specific order, you use chance, and out of it will come a new kind of order.
d.s.: but it would probably be an inferior order, a nonorder.
m.c.: exactly. so that it opens your imagination. chaos is chaos only if you think it is chaos.
d.s.: that's incorrect. some situations are genuinely chaotic.

actually, cunningham's work never looks chaotic, but the rule of chance does have another, probably unintended result. it makes the dances look alike. a patternÊa square, a circleÊstrikes the eye, and can be remembered, because it corresponds to a model in our minds. but two chance constructions, though they may be very different, tend to look alike, because we have no mental analogue for them. most people, when they recall a cunningham dance, probably remember it by its set or its costumes, or perhaps by some unchancy section, maybe a part where the dancers were made to look like birds or dollsÊin other words, where cunningham, for once, imposed a familiar pattern. parts a and b of èsplit sidesî were supposed to be different dances, and they were, sort of. in part a, there was a great deal of unsupported adagio, where the dancers have to stand on one leg and do a lot of slow, beautiful steps, preferably in unison. unsupported adagio is probably the hardest thing a dancer ever has to do, and so part a had an undercurrent of tension. in part b, the movement was fasterÊhopping, runningÊand therefore happier. but i wouldn't remember the difference between the two sections if i didn't have notes.

this doesn't bother me. or, i see it as the price cunningham pays for the achievement of a certain sort of bliss. reading his zen utterances to deborah solomonÊèchance becomes its own orderîÊyou may think, give me a break. but what he says here actually comes true on his stage. many people have pointed out that cunningham's work looks like nature, and it does. it has the same surprise within regularity, pathos within amorality. in part a of èsplit sides,î there is a duet for daniel squire and the excellent holley farmer. he tips her so far forward that her chin practically hits the floorÊa perilous maneuver. she seems to like it, though, because once she stands up again she immediately falls backward, head first, trusting squire to catch her, which he does. this is an intimate sceneÊa love scene, really. you can't have people saving each other from physical danger without communicating some kind of love. but what kind are we looking at here? carmen and don josÃ? fred and ginger? cunningham never tells us, never fills in the blanks. that is what some people think of as his coldness. i would call it his freedom from cant.

audiences probably watch cunningham's work differently from the way they watch other kinds of dancing. because they know there's no regular story being told, nothing they have to keep track of, they can let their minds wander now and then. but, when they are paying attention, i think it is an especially keen attention, again because of the unfilled-in story. why does farmer keep falling? why does squire carry her out in that elaborate, bent-legged pose, as if she were running in the air? such actions press on the mind, and if the mind can't answer they may press it harder.

you can find dancing that is more poignant, or easier to watch, than cunningham's, but i don't think any choreographer in the world gives us a closer look at the truth. beauty without reasons, and without anxiety over the lack of reasons: that may be what life was like before we started making it up. sometimes, when i look at cunningham's stage, i think i'm seeing the world on the seventh day, with everything new and just itselfÊbefore the snake, and the tears, and the explanations.
(joan acocella)

the village voice
onstage at bam, mayor bloomberg lauds the 50th anniversary of merce cunningham's company. behind him, dancers warm up. carolyn brown, robert rauschenberg, jasper johns, and sage cowles throw dice to determine which of two music compositions, two decors, two sets of costumes by james hall (beautifully patterned black-and-gray or brilliant mottled colors), and two lighting plots by james f. ingalls will come first in the premiere of split sides. three radiohead musicians give a thumbs-up at "winning" the opening slot over the experimental icelandic rock group sigur r s, and their fans in the packed balconies cheer. cunningham smiles benignly, enjoying, as usual, the order within potential chaos.

over the stage hangs a "merce 50" sign in the shape of an interstate marker. when in those 50 years has he not been in the fast lane of discovery? yet he's never been too set in his route to veer off onto roads bumpier and less traveled. his dancesÊbrave new vistas that suddenly remind us of homeÊcontinue to disturb some people. in the 2002 fluid canvas, sparse patterns of dots and lines moving on the backdrop exemplify up-to-the-minute technology: a motion-capture view of cunningham hand movements by shelley eshkar and paul kaiser. for split sides, robert heishman's black-and-white camera obscura projections and catherine yass's complex layering and blurring manipulation of color photography yield landscapes both familiar and unreal. the powerful scores by radiohead and sigur r s (played live only on opening night) expand the "rock" label with distinctive, intricate collages of voices, instruments, and electronic sounds. multiple speakers beam around the hall radiohead's dense mix of voices talking, say, or sigur r s's bells.

cunningham's 15 magnificently intrepid dancers add his complexity and their own to these worlds. in fluid canvas (music by john king), stands of them are sometimes as still as treesÊarms branchingÊwhile others prowl around them. in both dances, as always, they're mostly alert, vertical, and as high-stepping and leggy as wading birds. but they may roll their shoulders, cant their heads, let a move ripple or twist their torsos. you could be watching life around a watering hole; rapid flurries of movement or bounding passages across the space succeed smooth, careful maneuvers. oddity is always possible. at one point in split sides, holley farmer grabs daniel squire's arm and then throws it away (he later carries her offstage like a lance). although in one part of this work partners move alike, in many encounters they preserve their independence. when jeannie steele and jonah bokaer meet in fluid canvas, their dance is like an intense if playful conversation with both people talking at once. over the course of the evening, there's another intriguing duet for cÃdric andrieux and derry swan; a lively trio for jennifer goggans, koji mizuta, and bokaer; and remarkable solos for swan and bokaer. and so much more. cheers for lisa boudreau, ashley chen, paige cunningham, mandy kirschner, daniel roberts, robert swinston, and cheryl therrien! all power to merce. no rest stops for him!

most ballet companies, on the other hand, see preserving the classics as part of their job, but thanks to the vagaries of oral handing-down, those works are already a gumbo of individual dancers' favorite steps, choreographers' updates, and managers' ideas of "fresh" productions. many were lukewarm about george balanchine's don quixote, but at least he impressed a personal and deeply felt vision on cervantes's tale. the vibrant, often thrilling dancers of ballet nacional de cuba make do with remnants of the 1869 petipa version, altered early on by alexander gorsky, plus new choreography by the company director and cuban "living treasure" alicia alonso, marta garcia, and maria elena llorente. pieces of ludwig minkus's score have been shuffled about, and choreography for one character assigned to another. in a dramatic surprise, the wounded don quixote is played by a double, so that octavio martin can rise up from behind a rock and enter his own dream of dulcinea amid wood nymphs. in view of the verve and prowess of the company's men, a lot more dancing has been created for six red-caped bullfighters (who, for some reason, have daggers instead of banderillas or swords). a lame attempt to insert political comment makes camacho, the foppish aristocrat determined to wed the innkeeper's frisky daughter kitri (who loves the barber, basil), into a french invader. we're expected to see dad as a quisling, and basil and kitri's wedding as striking a blow for freedom and justice.

when the action lags or the choreography is banal, it's hard to see beyond salvador fernandez's lavish but garishly tasteless costumes. however, the dancers win your heart with their discipline, strength, and beautiful port de bras. as basil, charmer joel carre²o, who looks about 16, has stirringly lofty elevation and butter-smooth turns (he sometimes appears unfinished in minor steps). in the climactic pas de deux, viengsay valdÃs perches astonishingly on pointe, supported only by her partner's smile, while measures of music roll by; she alternates single and double fouettÃs as if she could go on all night. the ballet also boasts strong, elegant, arrogant dancing by jaime diaz as espada, hero of the bullring; an excellent display by romel fr meta as a nimble gypsy; and fine performances by bold hayna gutiÃrrez as mercedes and long, lean sadaise arencibia as the queen of the dryads.
(deborah jowitt)

 

 

 

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