Moves and Movies

As the Merce Cunningham Dance Company crosses the country and the globe on its two-year Legacy Tour, New Yorkers have to wait their turn until next year, when the troupe will perform in several local venues. The recent local premiere of Cunningham’s Xover at Fall for Dance was a tantalizing reminder of what we’ve been missing, and now an enterprising monthly film series will offer the master choreographer’s work in a different, but also very vital, form. Beginning next Monday, with the world premiere of Interscape, the series gets underway with four films by Charles Atlas, each recording and interpreting for the camera a major late Cunningham dance.

Cunningham was in the vanguard of exploring the possibilities of dance on film and video, and Atlas was a crucial interpreter and collaborator on many of those projects. An assistant stage manager for the company in the early 1970s, he was also a filmmaker, and made a film of Cunningham’s Walkaround Time. A fruitful, innovative collaboration was soon launched. “When Merce decided that he wanted to make video projects, he invited me to collaborate with him,” Atlas recalls. “I didn’t know video; I just was a filmmaker. So I learned video from a book, and then I taught it to him. That’s how it began.”

“It” came to include a series of masterful dance videos, including Fractions, Locale, Channels/Inserts, for which Cunningham re-envisioned his choreography for the camera or even created a work specifically for the camera. After 1983, Atlas turned his focus to other projects, but in 1999 he again became closely involved with Cunningham’s work and spent much of the ensuing decade filming the master chorographer’s late works, as well as important revivals.

“During this recent period, starting in 1999, I’ve been filming the pieces on stages, with minimal changes for camera. So they’re basically recordings of pieces,” Atlas says. But his luminous film of the 2000 dance Interscape, which captures the thrill of Cunningham’s unpredictable sense of space, as well as peerless performances by the company members of that moment, is much more than a mere recording. Atlas’ decades of working closely with Cunningham and his intimate knowledge of the choreography enable him to see—and in turn let us see—all the work’s intricacies, surprises and contrasts.

“I respect the choreography, but I impose my own eye on it. But I feel since I’ve worked with Merce for so long, I almost have the choreographer’s eye,” Atlas notes. “Normally, I videotape the dance in rehearsal, and then study the tapes and make elaborate notes. With either one or two assistants, we talk directly to the cameramen during the filming, reminding them who they have to follow, and what they have to include.”

Interscape, a 45-minute work, was filmed on a theater stage in France, though not in performance, a year after its premiere. Atlas filmed a number of the dances there at the time, thanks to an arrangement that allowed the company to film there in exchange for giving a free performance. Atlas’ film of BIPED, a 1999 dance that is one of Cunningham’s most mesmerizing and visually striking productions, will be shown Nov. 15. Split Sides, a 2003 work which features music by Radiohead and Sigur Rós, as well as multiple options determined at each performance by chance procedures, was filmed in 2006 at SUNY Purchase. It will be shown Dec. 20.

Closing out the initial quartet of screenings—plans call for the series to continue throughout 2011—is Atlas’ film of Cunningham’s mighty Ocean, a 1994 work, infrequently performed since it must be seen in the round. He filmed its September 2008 performances in the Rainbow Granite Quarry in Waite Park, Minn., confronting “enormous challenges.” He lost crucial time to bad weather, and was filming, this time, in live performance. “Because it’s a piece in the round, I wasn’t sure that I could successfully translate that into a single-screen film.”

But by then, Atlas knew Cunningham’s work as well as anyone, and was prepared for such a challenge. “Merce used the whole space in his work, it wasn’t just the center of the stage. So that’s challenging, to keep a sense of space and how he uses space and at the same time wanting to see the dancers. With certain pieces, if there was an option, I chose which ones I thought would work best for film.” For these later films (and he notes that there are about a dozen of them yet to be seen), he would show his edits to Cunningham for comment—but they did not work together in the close collaboration of the earlier period, when Cunningham often re-conceived his choreography for Atlas’ camera.

Each monthly screening will include discussion with related artists; Atlas plans to attend the two that are premieres. Each will also include an episode of the lively, informative web series, Mondays with Merce, which offer insights into many aspects of his repertory and choreographic process.

BAC Flicks: Mondays with Merce

Oct. 11, Nov. 15, Dec. 20, Jan. 10, [Baryshnikov Arts Center], 450 W. 37th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-868-4444; 7, $15 (Fall series: 3 for $30).