Context

Performed in Chicago, Illinois at SITE/less performance venue on October 19th through 22nd, S45 is an experimental collaboration centered around a dance work by choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) and his piece “Suite for Five” which originally premiered in 1956. The venue, SITE/less, co-directed by choreographer Michelle Kranicke and architect Micheal Sundry, has a mission to be an experimental architecture, movement, and research center. For this specific performance, the space was adapted to be an in-the-round stage filled with multicolored platforms and ramps that echoed the colors of the original costumes for “Suite for Five“. Audience members sat and moved alongside the performers on the stage and off amidst the bright green ramps interjecting themselves into the dances. The performance began with “Suite for Five” restaged by Paige Cunningham-Caldarella, a former Cunningham Dance Company member. Five dancers moved through six sections of solos, duets, and a trio culminating in a final quintet opus to conclude the original work. Merce Cunningham’s work is rigorous, and this piece’s movement requires off-center balances, long lines, buoyant jumps, and stable landings. It is a movement vocabulary that requires extreme concentration and skill. When talking about this piece among colleagues, it was described as pure and exposed as the difficulty is executing the smallest of details and confidence in every millisecond of movement. Post-intermission, the second half was to reflect the original piece structurally; a solo, then a duet, then a trio, solo, duet, and final quintet. Choreographers Michelle Kranicke, Paige Cunningham-Caldarella, Darrell Jones, Roxane D'Orléans Juste and Kota Yamazaki each responded choreographically to the original “Suite for Five”, recontextualizing M. Cunningham’s work into contemporary conversations. They bring with them their own dance histories like Vogueing, José Limón, and Butoh, and these add to the blended pot of research of what contemporary dance is becoming in today’s world; a blend of it all brushing up against one another.

Personal

I chose not to write a critique on this performance simply because I was in it and how biased of me it would be to write about my exceptional colleagues I shared the stage with. Instead, I decided to write more of a response similar to these choreographers responding to Cunningham. More performances like these are needed; the performances that adventurously head off exploring into the existential sunset. I was touched by this performance in a way I did not know existed.

In this restaging of “Suite for Five” I was the performer in the green costume, so I knew the original work better than the first-time viewer. When we concluded Act 1 of the restaging, I quickly changed out of my costume, grabbed my post-performance glass of wine, and went to view Act 2. By the end of the first solo by Roxane D’Orléans Juste, I was already beginning to be in tears as I was overwhelmed with the processing of grief. My mind quickly contextualized this performance as a kind of movement eulogy as each choreographer centered and expressed themselves around that of Merce Cunningham. It is like in memoir texts when the writer defines themself or the main subject by more potently describing the people around them than bluntly stating their life. I now was seeing this in a movement setting by creating movement based around someone else. It was taking the self-indulgence out of dance that most pieces in this contemporary world are saturated with. I was touched by this dedication to so earnestly respect the life and work of another; a kind of basic human care I think we sometimes forget in our current state of the world. As each choreographer took the stage, each gave their own movement eulogy to Merce Cunningham; some knowing him well, some only knowing him faintly, but nonetheless giving homage to the movement legacy he left behind.