Interesting review of Merce Cunningham in Broad Street Review

I have for the past several months enjoyed reading the Philadelphia journal of local culture Broad Street Review .

The latest issue has a review of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Annenberg by Jim Rutter that is very perceptive.

"In an economy where many Americans sit at desks for 40 years of their lives, only those who engage in some type of athletic or physical pursuit retain the knowledge that they live in bodies—their primary experience of the world filtered through the lens of conscious thought. Strangely enough, I could say something similar about Merce Cunningham’s choreography, at least as represented by the two pieces performed by his company at the Annenberg.

Unlike his polar opposite in George Balanchine—who once described the goal of his choreography as “trying to make the music visible"— Cunningham works independently of a composer. Seated alone in a room— at a computer, no less (using a program called DanceForms)— he composes works that convey no sense of scenes or theme, no story, just a calculated sense of logic designed to produce pure movement."