Cunningham, Rauschenberg, Satie: “Nocturnes”, 1956-1968

Merce Cunningham and John Cage shared a devotion to the music of Erik Satie, deriving from the early days of their private relationship and confirmed in their 1949 months in Paris. Cunningham choreographed numerous pieces to Satie music; even after he had begun to pursue the radical independence of music and dance for which he became famous, he always followed Satie’s music with some precision and a careful study of the score (although his musicality had its unconventional aspects - he did not respond to some parts of the music, even when played fortissimo). One of his most important and long-lasting Satie creations was Nocturnes (1956), subtitled “from dusk to the witching hour”), which remained in repertory till 1968.

Cunningham had a deeply contrary streak, though. In 1955, he and his company had appeared briefly but successfully at Jacob’s Pillow. When Ted Shawn at the Pillow invited them to return in 1956, commissioning a new work, Cunningham asked what kind of piece the Pillow would like. “Something light,” was Shawn’s answer. Since Cunningham had already made a number of light and jocose works, this was not an unreasonable request. But Nocturnes was a complex creation, with mysterious implications and designs, and that “from dusk to the witching hour” subtitle. When Shawn remarked “But I asked for something light!”, Cunningham replied “It’s all in white: how much lighter could it be?” The Cunningham company was not invited back to the Pillow during Shawn’s lifetime.

Robert Rauschenberg’s costumes involved white tights and white turtleneck leotards, but also veils and hooped bonnets for the women. He wanted the effect of moonlight, in varying strengths and intensities, achieved without coloured gels. The only colour was two garters of blood-red glass beads on Viola Farber’s right thigh: “drops of blood”.

Cunningham called it “a white ballet”. His working titles for its five sections were:

#1 Children at dusk;

#2 Bits and pieces of night

#3 Metamorphoses (trees to humans to clouds to leaves to arms to water to bodies to mist)

#4 L’Amour

#5 Black and sorrow (witching hour).

Cunningham’s 1953 creation to Satie’s Trois morceaux en forme de poire , Septet, has endured to the present day; I have seen it danced by at least three companies. But Steve Paxton, who danced in the company in 1961-1964, has said that he found some of Cunningham’s response to Satie in Septet “corny” whereas he found Nocturnes far more musically satisfying; over all, he recalls Nocturnes as “a particularly beautiful dance.” Frederick Ashton agreed, remarking on its poetry and (in the Farber-Cunningham duet) eroticism. Alas, Nocturnes was lost; Cunningham had kept few notes on it.

These photos show the dazzling theatrical imagination of Rauschenberg’s designs and makeup. I’ve only just discovered (and am thunderstruck by) the first - by Richard Rutledge, best known as a fashion photographer- showing Carolyn Brown supported and suspended by William Davis and Paxton, while Shareen Blair holds an arabesque behind them. Photos 2-9 show the original cast: 2, showing Farber and Brown, is by John Lindquist, 3-7 are by Louis A. Stevenson, Jr.. 3 shows Farber (seated), Bruce King, and Brown; 4 shows Farber, Cunningham, Brown, Remy Charlip, and Marianne Preger; 5 shows Farber, King, Charlip, Brown, Cunningham. 6-8 show the “L’amour” duet between Farber and Cunningham (“What an extraordinarily supple quality she had!” Cunningham later wrote). Photo 8 by Oscar Bailey. The photos also show Farber’s famously arched feet. 9, a photo by John Launois, became here a famous cover photograph of the Saturday Evening Post.

Saturday 4 September