Lyon Opera Ballet: Cunningham Forever review – a modern master’s wild ambition
Sadler’s Wells, London Merce Cunningham’s demands on dancers are the stuff of legend, but as in the celebration of two of his classic works here, utterly essential
Merce Cunningham was always ahead of his time: as a dancer with the pioneering Martha Graham; at the forefront of mid-20th-century experimentalism with partner John Cage; and using computer power to create choreography in the 1990s, three decades before the AI boom. Cunningham died in 2009, aged 90, and one of his dancers, Cédric Andrieux, now leads Lyon Opera Ballet, which pays tribute to Cunningham revisiting two works, Beach Birds (1991) and Biped (1999).
Beach Birds is a classic. The dancers wear white unitards with a black stripe extending across the chest to gloved hands, and they do look bird-like, arms curved away from the body like wings or flippers. They jump and hop and tilt in balances, with quirky twists of the head. It is fiendishly difficult work, such careful placing of every limb, the absolute muscle control. The purity of form could seem detached, and yet with the peacefulness of Cage’s sparse score, there’s so much breathing space, a deep plié (bend) in second position can feel somehow emotional. The whole thing engenders intense curiosity, like watching animals in the wild.
Computer generated … Biped by Merce Cunningham. Photograph: Agathe Poupeney/PhotoScene
