Last Dance: moving on with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Trevor Carlson interviewed by Donald Hutera

In recent years Merce Cunningham had been commonly acknowledged as the world’s greatest living choreographer. On July 26, 2009 the grand old man of contemporary dance passed away quietly in his Manhattan home at the age of 90. As is the case with Pina Bausch, who died just a few weeks before him, what was entirely uncommon wasn’t only the body of work he produced for his eponymous company but also the influence that he and his methods exerted on dance and the arts generally.

So what does an organisation do when an artist of Cunningham’s stature and, what’s more, such insatiable curiosity is no longer around? First you grieve, as Trevor Carlson has done. "I’m happy to be the executive director of this amazing company," he says, "but Merce was my boss and my friend." Plainly the man is much missed. At the same time decisions had to be made about how to carry on without him. And so Carlson and his colleagues at the Cunningham Trust instituted an ambitious Legacy Plan. Among its chief components is an international tour of some of the master’s key dances and, as a longer term goal, the preservation of his astonishing body of work.

One of those dances is Nearly Ninety, which Dance Umbrella is co-presenting with the Barbican in London between Tuesday 26 October and Sat 30 October.These dates, says Carlson, are only the third time that the full production will have been seen since it premiered in Brooklyn on Cunningham’s 90th birthday last year.

On a practical level Carlson was a key player in seeing that Nearly Ninety came to fruition. "Merce was interested in the idea of an evening-length work," he says, "which we then pointed out could be tied to his 90th birthday." Although Cunningham apparently wasn’t too keen to celebrate the event, Carlson and others gently persuaded him that "it would be appropriate for the world to recognise this landmark whether he liked it or not."

Fittingly, the finished dance lasts just under 90 minutes. While creating it, says Carlson, "Merce was very much in the present. One of his former dancers, who spent a lot of time in the studio with him during the development of Nearly Ninety, said that it really looked like he knew he was making his last dance. It felt like that to me, too." How so? "Because everybody in the company got some sort of little gem of choreography that’s theirs." It’s lovely to think of the maestro fashioning a farewell gift for each of the latest in the long line of dancers who’ve been his instruments.

Cunningham’s celebrated company is spending a large chunk of the next two years on the road dancing 18 different works, including a number of revivals that span six incredible decades of choreographic output. Afterwards the troupe will disband, which is what Cunningham wished. "One of the reasons Merce created the company was so that he himself would always have something to do," Carlson reveals. "He was always clear that he didn’t want other choreographers working with his dancers."

Although Cunningham’s company will eventually cease to exist his dances won’t be lost. At least a quarter of the 200 he made are to be preserved via digitalised ‘dance capsules’ that will contain as complete a documentation as possible of each selected work. (Cunningham himself approved of the 50 chosen by the Trust.) The archival material will include broadcast-quality films, choreographer’s notes, lighting plots, music copyright details, fabric samples from costumes and much more. Everything, in short, that might be required to restage or study in depth a given dance.  

The Legacy Plan also features extensive help in career transitioning for the dancers and anyone else involved with Cunningham’s organisation at the time of his death. The whole thing, Carlson admits, has been overwhelming. "It’s sort of like asking yourself, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It might not be the right or the best way for anyone else, but it’s our way. And Merce was in full support of it."

© Donald Hutera, 2011