I visited New York City for the first time in my life in February of 2000. I was 23, queer and single and craved a
more culturally enriching life. After undergrad, I had been hiding out
in Southern California for a year or so, until I decided to do some graduate work, setting my sites on NYC.
I stayed for a week at the youth hostel up on Amsterdam Avenue and interviewed for schools by day. The rest of the time, I went on the prowl for anything that seemed artsy and queer. By will or chance, I found myself wandering one night along 14th Street, heading west, toward the river. At the time, the Meatpacking District was not a place for the Samantha Joneses of New York. It was still home to the transients, trannies and guys looking to get off with guys at Jay’s Hangout (color me nostalgic).
I was headed to Mother, a gay bar with cramped and dingy walls that came to life in the 1990s—and closed within a year after I visited. I came across a listing in a weekly mag for Richard Move’s queer salon, Martha@Mother, where Move impersonates Martha Graham and, with a chorus of dancers, would reconstruct Graham works while welcoming a variety of Downtown performance acts.
The first show of the evening was sold out, but I saw a drag king manning the door explain to another couple that there was a second show. I mustered up my courage and approached the pencil-mustachioed doorman, batted my eyes and got on the list for it.
Waiting in line for the second time, I met a muscle-daddy who took interest in my youth and paid my way in. We stood together in the back of the cramped space. The lights lowered and the first piece of music that came on was Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which, incidentally, I had tattooed on my shoulder.
The night would continue on auspiciously. Isaac Mizrahi was the guest emcee (he was great). I was introduced to Julie Atlas Muz, dressed as JonBenét Ramsey, who lip synced to “I Will Always Love You.”
Then, Mizrahi announced that there was an extra special guest coming out to perform. Around the corner came Merce Cunningham. He was about 80 at the time, and was still able to walk. When he took the stage, the entire crowd erupted in virtually endless applause and the already electric room surged at the legendary choreographer’s presence.
His performance consisted of him sitting on a stool, raising one arm or leg at a time, shaking his limbs, then setting them down. An electronic score played along. It was riveting, and somehow, monumental. There was something about Merce Cunningham, and how his life tethered the history of American modern and post-modern art with a specifically queer cultural legacy. (I just found this link to a report about this night by Wendy Perron for Dance Magazine. I had forgotten the lovely banter she recounts between Cunningham and “Martha.”)
Cunningham’s choreographic work speaks for itself, and his influence is probably impossible to measure. He exists, and will be examined on the level of artistic master, and that will be how he is widely remembered.
But as important was this stream of humility that ran through his life—that made his life real to me, at least—that kept him going to the small birthday celebrations for John Cage (his lifetime lover) at St. Marks church, where I saw him two years ago; that ushered him to a concert of one of his newest protégés at the Abrons Arts Center just last year; and that brought him, as an 80-year-old man, to a sketchy gay bar to make new work, to inspire, and to queer it up with the rest of us.
I find myself lucky, and humbled to have had my own life touch so closely, if fleetingly, to Merce Cunningham’s; not just from the times I have seen him, but through the friends I have who have worked with him—as dancers, designers and creators.
Seeing Merce at Mother cemented my resolve to uproot my life—as many of us have, and as many will continue to do—and move to New York City. That is one more thing, out of countless amazing things, for which I have Merce to thank.
I stayed for a week at the youth hostel up on Amsterdam Avenue and interviewed for schools by day. The rest of the time, I went on the prowl for anything that seemed artsy and queer. By will or chance, I found myself wandering one night along 14th Street, heading west, toward the river. At the time, the Meatpacking District was not a place for the Samantha Joneses of New York. It was still home to the transients, trannies and guys looking to get off with guys at Jay’s Hangout (color me nostalgic).
I was headed to Mother, a gay bar with cramped and dingy walls that came to life in the 1990s—and closed within a year after I visited. I came across a listing in a weekly mag for Richard Move’s queer salon, Martha@Mother, where Move impersonates Martha Graham and, with a chorus of dancers, would reconstruct Graham works while welcoming a variety of Downtown performance acts.
The first show of the evening was sold out, but I saw a drag king manning the door explain to another couple that there was a second show. I mustered up my courage and approached the pencil-mustachioed doorman, batted my eyes and got on the list for it.
Waiting in line for the second time, I met a muscle-daddy who took interest in my youth and paid my way in. We stood together in the back of the cramped space. The lights lowered and the first piece of music that came on was Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which, incidentally, I had tattooed on my shoulder.
The night would continue on auspiciously. Isaac Mizrahi was the guest emcee (he was great). I was introduced to Julie Atlas Muz, dressed as JonBenét Ramsey, who lip synced to “I Will Always Love You.”
Then, Mizrahi announced that there was an extra special guest coming out to perform. Around the corner came Merce Cunningham. He was about 80 at the time, and was still able to walk. When he took the stage, the entire crowd erupted in virtually endless applause and the already electric room surged at the legendary choreographer’s presence.
His performance consisted of him sitting on a stool, raising one arm or leg at a time, shaking his limbs, then setting them down. An electronic score played along. It was riveting, and somehow, monumental. There was something about Merce Cunningham, and how his life tethered the history of American modern and post-modern art with a specifically queer cultural legacy. (I just found this link to a report about this night by Wendy Perron for Dance Magazine. I had forgotten the lovely banter she recounts between Cunningham and “Martha.”)
Cunningham’s choreographic work speaks for itself, and his influence is probably impossible to measure. He exists, and will be examined on the level of artistic master, and that will be how he is widely remembered.
But as important was this stream of humility that ran through his life—that made his life real to me, at least—that kept him going to the small birthday celebrations for John Cage (his lifetime lover) at St. Marks church, where I saw him two years ago; that ushered him to a concert of one of his newest protégés at the Abrons Arts Center just last year; and that brought him, as an 80-year-old man, to a sketchy gay bar to make new work, to inspire, and to queer it up with the rest of us.
I find myself lucky, and humbled to have had my own life touch so closely, if fleetingly, to Merce Cunningham’s; not just from the times I have seen him, but through the friends I have who have worked with him—as dancers, designers and creators.
Seeing Merce at Mother cemented my resolve to uproot my life—as many of us have, and as many will continue to do—and move to New York City. That is one more thing, out of countless amazing things, for which I have Merce to thank.
