MerceDay 10: the ambiguities of “RainForest” (1968)
MerceDay Continued,10. Ambiguities permeate Merce Cunningham’s work, his titles not least. He allowed people to think that the title of his 1968 work “RainForest” referred to the Pacific Northwest rainforest of his childhood, where his parents had taken him and his brothers when they were young. It did; but it also referred to the rainforests of central Africa.
Cunningham had been fascinated by anthropology for decades. Joyce Wike, an important girlfriend of his in the years 1938-1939 and 1941-1943, was an anthropology student at the University of Washington and then at Columbia University in New York: she introduced him to the dances of the dances of the Swinomish tribe in Fidalgo Island in Washington State. His notes for “The Seasons” (1947) refer to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who had been Wike’s teacher. A year after making “RainForest”, he said that it had come out of reading “The Forest People” (1961) by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, a first-person account of the tall white anthropologist amid a tribe of pygmies in central Africa.
Cunningham made “RainForest” on himself and five other dancers at the same time as he made his very different tribute to Marcel Duchamp, “Walkaround Time” on a far larger cast. The two dances had their premieres on consecutive nights. His notebooks show that he planned aspects of the two contrasting works simultaneously, sometimes on the same page. (It’s not always clear which work he’s referring to.) But it seems likely that, whereas he planned “Walkaround Time” quite schematically, “RainForest” may have been one of his most instinctively composed works of all. A film of the world premiere shows that either his own final solo had not yet fallen into place or he had not yet made time to learn it, though it soon arrived at a definitive form.
Among the ambiguities of “RainForest” are whether the six dancers represent humans and/or animals, and whether each dancer represents a different species and/or race. The opening duet shows the lead dancer (Cunningham originally) with one woman (Barbara Dilley Lloyd in 1968): with him standing and her seated at his feet, it’s easy to imagine he is the tall white anthropologist (as it is later when he prowls and paces) and she the pygmy, but her hand/arm language also immediately suggests the paws of a four-legged animal, and the way he joins her suggests that he and she are akin. (Barbara Dilley, much admired by all who saw her in this role, left the company in 1969. Cunningham gave her role to Meg Harper, who had been in the company at the time of the two 1968 premieres. Once, when the curtain was about to go up on Harper and him, he, standing over her, suddenly said “We’re pygmies”. Harper didn’t know what to make of this strange information, but actually it’s an important clue to “RainForest”.)
When the second man (Albert Reid in 1968) enters, however, she transfers her attentions to him in ways that seem sexually charged. Later characters at times seem to belong each to quite separate species (the role created by Carolyn Brown swings across the stage like a monkey from branches; the Gus Solomons Jr role at moments seems reptilian), each with his or her own body language.
There are never more than three people onstage at any one time; the drama changes with them. Each character, in due course, leaves the stage. The only one to return is Cunningham himself, at the end.
He closes “RainForest” alone, in a solo of blazing energy and contrasts, which may include anger. Is he even playing the same character, or is he now someone else? I sometimes feel that, with this solo, he declares himself an artist, the visionary who has created this world, and that this solo is his way of saying, in Rimbaud’s words, “J’ai seul la cléf de cette parade sauvage”: I alone have the key to this wild parade. Cunningham’s own roles often suggest that he is the voyeur, the seer, the artist.
Another source of the “RainForest” title may be a series of 1960s pendulum-like sculptures by his good friend the sculptor Louise Nevelson: she called them “Rainforest” (lower-case F), each with a different Roman numeral. The artist he chose for his own “RainForest” (upper-case F), however, was Andy Warhol. But the helium-filled silver pillows, “Silver Clouds”, had already been made and exhibited by Warhol: it was Cunningham’s idea to turn them into theatre and allowing half of them to float freely for the dancers to collide with, adding a new note of unpredictability to each performance. Warhol, once involved, wanted the dancers naked: not a good idea in Cunningham dance theatre. Jasper Johns, then artistic director of the Cunningham company, had the idea of designing skin-coloured tights that he ripped with a razorblade, allowing naked flesh to show here and there. The music was the first score commissioned by Cunningham from David Tudor, who, as a playing musician, had been part of the Cunningham and Cage world since the early 1950s. When Cunningham told Tudor his work’s title - something he always did with his chosen composers - Tudor replied “In that case I’ll put some raindrops in it.” (He named it “Rainforest”: lower-case F.) The electronic score is multifaceted, but noises resembling water falling on large leaves are audible: long after Tudor’s death, one Cunningham musician told me what fun it was each night to try to create those sounds. Cunningham went on to commission many subsequent works from Tudor. The dancers came to realise that, when Cunningham was giving a work to Tudor, this would be one of Cunningham’s dramas: Cunningham might give no poetic idea to Tudor other than the work’s title, but he knew the kind of musical mind Tudor possessed.
This photo shows Cunningham early on in the dance, in intimate connection with the first woman (Dilley). Neither of them see that the second man (Reid) is entering behind them. Once in Cunningham’s old age, he, now in a wheelchair, became aware that some young dancers were watching the film of the 1968 world premiere on a laptop. Glimpsing the film, Cunningham remarked fondly “Oh that Barbara Dilley! She certainly knew how to crawl across a man’s lap!”
Friday 16 April
