Merce Cunningham: The Events at Dia Beacon Screening and Panel Discussion
Company:
Merce Cunningham: The Events at Dia Beacon Screening and Panel Discussion
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will present the world theatrical premiere of Merce Cunningham: The Events at Dia Beacon, a 40-minute film drawing on footage from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s unique, site-specific Events at Dia Beacon in 2008 and 2009. The screening will take place on Monday, April 8, at 6pm, at the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center.
From 2007 to 2009, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company presented a series of Cunningham’s Events in the galleries of Dia Beacon. This film, edited by award-winning film director/editor Daniel Madoff, is a compilation from five of these site-specific stagings with footage from the dress rehearsals and live performances.
Says producer Nancy Dalva: “The film creates an entirely new cinematic event with linkages revealing the choreographer’s idiosyncratic methodology and acute sensitivity to environment. Cunningham arranged these multi-stage performances after careful site visits, taking into account the space, the artworks, the natural light, and the specific properties of each gallery, or, as he called it, ‘situation.’ Of Richard Serra’s ‘Torqued Ellipses,’ he said, ‘It was like dancing next to the pyramids.’ The music, commissioned for each space, was live.”
After the screening, Nancy Dalva will chat with director Daniel Madoff, Jennifer Goggans, Merce Cunningham Trust Program Director and guest artist with Gandini Juggling, and choreographer duo Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. All were members of Merce Cunningham Dance Company during the Events at Dia.
This world premiere event, free to the public, fittingly takes place at the Library for the Performing Arts, where the Jerome Robbins Dance Division preserves the Merce Cunningham archives.
