Merce
Cunningham’s “Walkaround Time”
John
Mueller
December
4, 2011
Merce Cunningham's remarkable work, "Walkaround
Time" was filmed in beautiful color and with a knowing
respect for the choreography by Charles Atlas who was the
Cunningham company's production stage manager and who
collaborated with Cunningham on a number of video events
in later years.
The dance work, in some respects, is a difficult
one. It is unusually long (48 minutes) and rather wry,
understated, and spare. It is filled with wonderful
happenings, but they emerge quietly and, of course, in
Cunningham's own time.
I think "Walkaround Time" is, purely and simply, a
masterwork. Furthermore in its quiet, ambling way it
illustrates many of those elements that go to make up
Cunningham's greatness as a choreographer. While it may be
a mistake to throw this film at an over-expectant and
under-prepared audience, the film does show what
Cunningham is all about and it can make lifetime converts
of those who can learn to meet the choreographer on his
own terms.
In a way it may be especially valuable to have this work available on film because one of the medium's special virtues is that it can be shown over and over again and "Walkaround Time" is so filled with quiet happenings and exquisite surprises that no one could conceivably get a full appreciation in a single viewing.
Marcel
Duchamp
In discussing "Walkaround Time" it is probably best
to start with its extraordinary décor—and with Marcel
Duchamp.
Duchamp was an artist generally classified
somewhere between Dada and surrealism whose output is
marked by its originality, its wittiness, and its ability
to stir controversy—characteristics, of course, also of
Cunningham who is a great admirer of Duchamp's work.
Duchamp was responsible for the famous
painting "Nude Descending a Staircase" that so
scandalized New York at the historic Armory Show of 1913.
He later went on to challenge aesthetic theories with his
"readymades"—an ordinary object like a snow shovel, a
bottle rack, a porcelain urinal, a typewriter dust cover
would be framed or decked out as a work of art. And he
gave his considered view of Tradition by presenting as his
own signed work a reproduction of the "Mona Lisa" with a
moustache painted on (he later presented the painting
without the mustache and titled it "shaved").
The work
often considered to be Duchamp's greatest is "The Large
Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,"
created on a free-standing pane of glass. The work was
begun in 1915 and declared to be in a state of "definite
incompletion" by 1923.
It is in two parts. The top section represents the
bride (or the "bride machine")—a horizontal cloud-like
formation connected to a vertical contraption. The bottom
section shows the nine "bachelors"—represented by some
brown cylinder-like shapes—and four other items: a
chocolate grinder, a series of cones, a sleigh with a
water wheel, and a cluster of delicate circular designs.
Duchamp has explained at length how all these shapes
interrelate.
For the decor
for "Walkaround Time" the various parts of "The Large
Glass" have been translated onto a set of large
semi-transparent vinyl boxes by Jasper Johns who has been
the Cunningham company's artistic advisor since 1966. The
two "bride" sections are hung upstage and the five
sections from the "bachelor" portion are distributed
around the stage so that the dancers pass in front of,
around, and behind them.[1]
David Behrman's score for "Walkaround Time" also reflects
a Duchampian perspective—in fact its title, "...for nearly
an hour..." is taken from the title of a Duchamp work. It
consists of several "readymade" sounds some of
which—tramping in gravel, automobile engines—also suggest
walking or traveling. The last section of the score is a
gabble of female voices discussing "The Large Glass."
The dance work
In various ways the choreography pays tribute to
Duchamp (who attended
the premiere on March 19, 1968 in Buffalo).[2]
This is done most simply and elegantly at the very
beginning and at the end as Cunningham lets Duchamp have
the first and last words in the dance work in much the
same way as Doris Humphrey salutes the Bach music in her
"Passacaglia" (also available on film).
As the curtain goes up on "Walkaround Time" the
nine dancers stand quietly posed around the stage allowing
the audience the leisure to peruse the stunning decor. The
first movements are quiet, stylized bows—with their legs
spread in various positions the dancers slowly and in
their own time plie and bend over from the waist, then
rise again to a standing position with their arms
blossoming out and upward. The dancers are positioned in a
pattern that reflects the spacing of the nine "bachelor"
objects in the "The Large Glass."
The ending is equally exquisite. The boxes from the
"bachelor" portion of "The Large Glass" are moved upstage
under the suspended "bride" boxes and assembled to
approximate the way they are arranged in "The Large
Glass." (It was reportedly Duchamp's idea to do this
somewhere in the dance work.) Then the dancers quietly
mill around (walk around) behind the assembled decor and
finally, shortly before the curtain descends, they can be
seen to seat themselves in a line on the floor behind it.
Other choreographic references to Duchamp relate to
the Dada-inspired ballet, "Relâche," which Duchamp helped
with and in which he appeared. The ballet was given by
Rolf de Mare's Swedish Ballet in Paris in 1924. Its music
was by Erik Satie, a composer especially revered by
Cunningham.
"Walkaround Time" has a structure similar to that
of "Relâche": it is in two parts separated by an
"intermission" for the performers, but not for the
audience. (Of course "The Large Glass" is also in two
parts.) In "Relâche" the "intermission" was given over to
a zany fast-paced film
by Rene Clair called "Entr'acte" which included a scene
showing Duchamp playing chess with Man Ray; Satie was also
in the film.
In the 7-minute "intermission" of "Walkaround Time"
the house lights come part way up and the music changes to
the wallpaper/cocktail‑lounge type and later to the
recorded efforts of a wonderfully inept soprano. The
dancers lounge on the stage, stretching, talking quietly,
and, well, walking around (but not playing chess). It's
been suggested that a point here is to suggest the
"readymades" again—to display the dancers in the ordinary,
everyday movement that, properly framed, can be seen to
take on a beauty of its own.
After the "intermission," the second part of
"Walkaround Time" begins with another apparent reference
to "Relâche." Cunningham, upstage behind one of the larger
boxes, can be seen to be jogging in place. As he does so
he changes his clothes—he removes his tights and shirt and
replaces them with another pair of tights and shirt of
identical color. In the second section of "Relâche" there
was a passage, preserved in a published still photograph,
in which nine men in tuxedos lined up across the stage and
calmly took off their formal gear revealing their spangled
long underwear, and then redressed. Cunningham's solo may
also relate to the story that Duchamp himself fleetingly appeared
on stage in "Relâche" in the nude (except for a false
beard and a strategically placed apple) in the role of
Adam.[3]
Duchamp is suggested, at least to me, in other
choreographic elements. In "The Large Glass" the "bride"
is kept serenely separate from her attending suitors, the
"bachelors." In "Walkaround Time" there are long solos for
women, Valda Setterfield near the beginning and,
particularly, Carolyn Brown in the second half. In this
the soloist is from time to time accompanied by little
spurts of activity by other dancers who come on stage,
engage in a choreographic commentary (usually frenetic),
and then vanish. The soloist, meanwhile, proceeds calmly
and obliviously.
And, of course, the entire choreographic aesthetic
of "Walkaround Time," at once austere, whimsical,
transparent, and meticulous, is like that of "The Large
Glass" and is one likely to appeal to someone with
Duchamp's sensibilities.
To get, finally, to the choreography directly. It
is rather common to hear that Merce Cunningham has
demonstrated that "anything can go with anything." There
is a sense, I suppose, in which that's true. However the
slogan can lead one to expect choreographic jumbles in
Cunningham's work and it can hamper a perception of the
elements that go into making each of his works
distinctive.
Like Doris Humphrey, Cunningham often shows a
preference for exploring a limited number of movement
ideas in a single dance work. "Winterbranch," as
Cunningham has pointed out, is "about" the "fact" of
falling. An aerial solo would be out of place. By contrast
"Summerspace" has a great deal to do with covering and
shaping the stage space and there is scarcely a fall in
it. "Sounddance" is "about" "packed activity," he has
said, and "Landrover" is "about" traveling over different
landscapes. In works like "Place," "Rebus," "Solo", and (I
gather) "Second Hand" there seems to be a narrative,
atmospheric, or emotional thread.
Besides the Duchamp homage, the choreographic theme
in "Walkaround Time" seems to be the idea of progressing
(of walking) across the proscenium space from one side to
the other.
The sparest expression of this is given to Meg
Harper at one point: she simply walks across the stage. At
another Susana Hayman-Chaffey does the same, except that
she pauses briefly, then walks off. At the end of Carolyn
Brown's major solo, filled with expectant stillnesses, she
comes to "rest" on high demi-point; and Cunningham walks
through, puts his arm around her waist, and carries her
off. (The bachelor gets the bride in that case.)
The idea is developed at its most complex in a
beautiful duet for Harper and Douglas Dunn. They progress
across the stage, but the progress is halted and
temporarily reversed at times, tortured almost, as they
lean and pull against each other.
There are many applications of the idea: the
dancers travel across in leaps, in hops with fluttering
kicks; Cunningham's jogging that sets each half of the
work in motion; Dunn begins a solo on the left, poses, and
is carried by several dancers to the other side where,
replaced, he continues the solo. (Some of Dunn's poses
suggest the Rodin sculpture,
"Walking Man.")
But the most extraordinary expression comes near
the end of the work in a contrast between a minimum and
maximum walk: as Cunningham inches himself across the
stage moving only his feet, Sandra Neels is given a slow
motion, expansive run, choreographed down to the finger
tip. (More "Relâche"? There is a slow motion run in the
"Entr'acte" film.)
Along with developments on this central thematic
idea, there are examples, some fleeting, of signature
elements of Cunningham's choreography. His "machines," for
example, where clusters of dancers will bunch together
moving as a single quirky organism—they seem to suggest
the "grinder" or "water wheel" in the lower section of
"The Large Glass." Or an amazing splintering of brilliant
portions of Setterfield's solo between her and Neels: they
will be in unison, one will break out of the dance, walk a
few steps, and then pick it up on a later portion of the
phrase. Or, shortly before the ending, a Humphreyesque
summary of many of the choreographic elements presented
earlier, including the opening bows.
The
film
Charles Atlas has filmed "Walkaround Time" with
quiet integrity. The film gives a very good feel for how
the work looked on stage and for how the choreography
shaped itself in the space. Even where one can't see
everything at once, the film almost always lets the viewer
know where (and if) things are happening. Of course in the
case of "Walkaround Time" the decor sometimes obscures
some of the choreography from some of the audience, but
one always knows where things are happening even if they
cannot be made out completely, and it is this feeling that
is kept on the film.
As mentioned, a highlight of the dance work is a
long solo for Carolyn Brown with moments of considerable
quiet—floating like Duchamp's "Bride"—during which little
explosive events occur among the other dancers. Another
filmmaker might cut to these lesser, but more kinetic,
events, ignoring the soloist. Atlas, on the other hand,
always keeps the soloist in the viewer's perspective.
And toward the end he provides one of the most
beautiful moments in all dance films: instead of following
Sandra Neels in her exquisite slow motion run, Atlas fixes
the camera on one spot, allowing her slowly to progress
across its field of view from frame edge to frame edge—a
kind of camera eye perspective of the basic movement idea
Cunningham is exploring in the dance work.
There are some bad moments early in the film—some
jiggly camera work, some overly-close shots—and at times
the camera seems a bit too distant, but these prove to be
minor problems. In creating the film Atlas had originally
intended a special mode of projection. The first section
would be projected in the usual way, but the second
section and the "intermission" were to be shown in two
views: two separate reels shown simultaneously by two
interlocked projectors on a double-width screen. Because
of technical difficulties, it has only rarely been shown
that way.
Among the values of this film is that it preserves the performances of some extraordinary Cunningham dancers no longer with the company. There is Valda Setterfield at her brightest and wittiest, the beautifully controlled Sandra Neels and Susana Hayman-Chaffey, the forceful Douglas Dunn, and Carolyn Brown, who can made an event of cosmic proportions out of simply standing still. Also on the film, besides those already mentioned, are Chase Robinson and Ulysses Dove, both seen rather briefly.[4]
As it happened, I attended the premiere performance
of Merce Cunningham’s “Walkaround Time” in Buffalo, NY, on
March 19, 1968. In 1970, I began to teach a course, “Dance
as an Art Form,” at the University of Rochester where I
was employed as a political scientist, and continued to do
so for some 20 years. From the beginning, I was interested
in using film and videotape in the course and was able to
purchase a 16mm print of the “Walkaround Time” film which
I then showed and discussed in my class every year. For
several years I wrote a column on dance films for Dance Magazine
and devoted the July 1977 column to Atlas’ film. In those
days, pages were dummied up using a scissors and paste
approach. At some point the editors decided to rearrange
my “Walkaround Time” piece to fit in a different way on
the page. They snipped it into pieces to do so, but they
unfortunately somehow managed to reassemble the pieces in
the wrong order in a process that might have amused Merce
Cunningham, but did not amuse me.
The article above is that piece arranged in the
right order with a few cuts restored and a few minor
repairs made. I have also added links (hardly an
imaginable development in 1977) that may be helpful to the
reader.
This has been posted in the last month of the
formal existence of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
which has meant so much to me over the years.
The “Walkaround Time” film has now been digitized,
receiving its first showing as part of Nancy Dalva’s
“Mondays with Merce” series at the Baryshnikov Arts Center
in New York on December 5, 2011. Hopefully the film will
become available again in that form.
John
Mueller is currently at Ohio State University.
Between 1974 and 1982, he wrote a column
on dance films for Dance
Magazine and was dance critic for the Rochester Democrat
and Chronicle. His book, Astaire Dancing: The
Musical Films, was published in 1985 by Knopf and
has since been reprinted
in a digitally remastered version by The Educational
Publisher.
[1] Johns’ set
elements for "Walkaround Time" are now in the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
[2] Duchamp died on October 2, 1968, seven
months after the premiere of "Walkaround Time," at the
age of 81.
[3] The section may also, of course, relate to
the Nude Descending a Staircase.