"How Strange"

"This," said the young man, "is the avant-garde of all the arts in one hall." He was standing in the lobby of Manhattan's off-Broadway Phoenix Theater, surrounded by an intermission crowd of beards, ponytails and beatminks. The occasion: an evening of modern dance presented by the most consistently daring experimenter in the field--Dancer-Choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Since he left the Martha Graham company 14 years ago, Merce Cunningham has pursued a labyrinthine path extravagantly admired by his followers but often bewilderingly obscure to uninitiated spectators. In Cunningham's world, disembodied arms may project from behind curtains to serve as coat racks, the dancers may suddenly suspend all motion to stand fiercely washing their hands, the hero, dressed in a multi-colored coat, may roll about grunting like a pig or baying like a hound.

Motion & Stillness. On last week's program the two principal pieces, both choreographed by Cunningham, were Summer-space and Antic Meet, set to music by two modernists--Morton Feldman, 35, and John Cage, 47. The first, described as "a lyric dance," was an impressionistic work evoking the shimmering heat of summer, the play of light and shade. It was danced before a pointillistic backdrop of blue and green, and the dancers wore similarly dappled costumes (the spots were sprayed on with a paint gun), which permitted them to disappear into and emerge from the scenery as if they were passing through a wall. Throughout, various members of the company wandered haphazardly on and off stage, paying little apparent attention to what the others were doing. They were all concerned, explains Cunningham, "with moving and being still."

Antic Meet, set to squeaking, creaking, honking music conducted by Composer Cage himself, was mostly satirical--a spoof of social conventions, sports, the modern dance itself. At one point Cunningham pulled on and off a multisleeved sweater in a pointed jab at Martha Graham's fondness for dressing and undressing while dancing. At another he appeared in white coveralls and went through a marvelously loose-limbed parody of vaudeville-style dancing, with broad suggestions of Fred Astaire. The piece contained few outright ballet laughs, but it was distinguished by the clean, sculptural style that is the mark of Cunningham's best work.

Bus & Symbols. Choreographer Cunningham, 38, learned his first fancy steps from an oldtime vaudeville performer who taught him a sailor's hornpipe in a special soft-shoe version. That was back home in Centralia, Wash., where Cunningham grew up, the son of a country lawyer. In those days he used to tap-dance at the local Grange Hall, eventually graduated to a summer session at California's Mills College, where he met Martha Graham and agreed to join her company. In the Graham years he danced male leads in such works as Letter to the World and Appalachian Spring and was the Christ figure in El Penitente. He now runs his own school in Manhattan, makes occasional tours in a Volkswagen bus with his small dance company (four girls and one man), plus Composer Cage and Pianist David Tudor.

Cunningham professes to be utterly bewildered by complaints that his work is obscurely symbolic. "Symbols," says he, "don't interest me. You see a chair strapped on my back. Can't we just say, 'How strange'?"

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