Merce Cunningham and Co

In 1982, Jacquot went to New York to film the then 63-year-old Merce Cunningham at work in his studio at Westbeth Artists Community in lower Manhattan. Intermixed with rehearsals, a one-on-one session with dancer Susan Emery, and sections of several dances including Roadrunners and Aeon, Cunningham talks with Jacquot and his crew about his partnership with John Cage, the role of chance in his art (including the I-Ching) and the relationship between his art and his life, alternating between English and French. Jacquot is very good at visually illustrating if not dramatising Cunningham’s unique sense of space and his approach to his art in terms of lines and masses of movement in a space and time, without hierarchy or centre. ‘Each instant is interesting,’ says the fiercely focused Cunningham at one moment, ‘each instant is a possible climax’. A lovely little portrait of the modern artist as an aging yet vital man. (KJ)