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on the part of the dancers. Dance is so demanding, physically and emotionally, that fatigue sometimes blocks the imagination. “The trouble is that we all tend to fall back on our habits,” Cunningham has said, “and when you’re tired, you’re likely to do the easy thing.” His recent work is as throughly choreographed as anything by Balanchine or Robbins, and his dancers, whose uncanny physical interrelatedness on stage provides the cues that the music does not, have many passages of unison movement that they perform with exact timing and classical precision. Cunningham has never ceased to alter his choreographic means whenever it suited him, however, and it may be that chance, indeterminacy, and other methods of getting beyond personal taste and habit will re-enter his work in the future. Some of the newer dances seem to sustain a single mood throughoutRainforest, for example, with its exotic and sensual texture and its floating silver pillows designed by Andy Warhol, or the deliciously high-spirited How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run, which has the feeling of a circus or a comic track meet, Others, such as Place, Walkaround Time, and Second Hand, present a shifting kaleidoscope of mood and atmosphere—violence and destruction, complex human relationships, the sheer animal joy of being alive. Cunningham’s theater is a rehearsal of the human situation in the real world, with all its bewildering and often threatening diversity intact. To that end his dancers remain individuals, moving with great naturalness in an atmosphere as complex, as unpredictable, and as fitfully beautiful as life itself. No wonder the young respond. At the moment, Cunningham is finishing a new dance that he has been working on since last summer. It will run for just under an hour, but there is no title yet, and no score, and the dancers know only that it will be divided into four parts, each of which can be performed separately or in any combination that Cunningham decides upon for the occasion. The new piece will have its premiere next month when the company presents its annual two-week season at the much-revivified Brooklyn Academy. For the anarchic young—who knows?— it may even turn out to have a specific meaning. Cunningham once said, “If the dancer dances—which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance—but if the dancer dances, everything is there. The meaning is there, if that’s what you want."

činjenice ISTORI JA. 1953. godine posle jedanaest godina saradnje sa kompozitorom John Cage-om, Merce Cunningham je osnovao baletsku trupu sa kojom je vežbao prethodne zime u Njujorku za »Blek Mauntin koledž«. Do kraja leta trupa je imala na repertoaru sedam solističkih 1 devet grugniti radova, Trupa je debitovaia sledeće zime u jednonedeljnom angažmanu u »Teatru de Lis«. Od tada je Canningham ostvario više od pedeset numera koje je sa trupom izvodio u Americi. Evropi, Južnoj Americi, Indiji i Dalekom Istoku. Maja 1968. Bruklinska muzička akademija ponudila je trupi prvi angažman od 1954. •za celu sezonu u Njujorku. U sezoni 1968—69. trupa je nastupala po dve nedelje u Njujorku u pozorištu »Bill Rous« i na Operskoj sceni Bruklinske akademije. Stalno smeštena u Bruklinskoj akademiji trupa će nastupati na sceni Opere jedanput godišnje u sezoni od dve nedelje. NAGRADE. Merce Cunningham je dobio dve nagrade Gugenhajmove stipendije i dotacije takvih institucija kao što su: Bernštajnova fondacija, Fondacija Džona D. Rokfelera 111, Nacionalne zaostavštine za umetnosti i Rokfelerova fondacija. Među nagradama nalazi se i »Zlatna zvezda« za koreografska ostvarenja, koju je Cunningham primio 1966. na četvrtom internacionalnom festivalu igre u pozorištu Champs Elysées. ANGAŽMANI. Merce Cunningham je bio angažovan kao koreograf od Njujorške filharmonije, Baletskog društva, Muzeja moderne umetnosti ii Konektikatske škole za igru. Njegovi radovi uvršćeni su u repertoare Njujork-Siti haleta i Kulbergovog švedskog haleta. UMETNIČKA SARADNJA. Robert Rauschenberg počeo je da saraduje sa Cunninghamom u Blek Mauntin koledžu. Deset godina on je opremao trupu skicama za kostime, scenografiju I svetla. Jasper Johns je posta© umetnički savetnik 1967. godine. Sa Cunninghamom su još sarađivali sledeói scenografi: Marcel Duchamp, Robert Morris, Isamu Noguchi, Frank Stella 1 Andy Warhol. John Cage, muzički direkter, uneo je radove novih Ili nepoznatih kompozitora u repertoar tru-pe. Dok su dela za konvencionalne limstrumente ostala, najveói deo repertoara trupe može se opisati kao »žlva elektronska muzika«. John Cage, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma su kompozitori - muzlóari koji stvaraju za trupu.

Među drugim kompozitorima, čije su partiture ina repertoaru nalaze se. David Behrman, Ehrle Brown, Morton Feldman. Tos hl Ichiyanagi, Gonion Nancarrow, Erik Satie, Christian Wolff i La Monte Young. BIOGRAFSKI RODACI. Merce Cunningham je roden u Centralini, Vašlngton. Studirao je u Korniš školi u Sltlu 1 školi Američkog haleta u Njujorku. Prvo je igrao za trupu Marthe Graham i u Beningtonovoj školi za igru. Pored aktivnosti iu Baletskoj trupi, Cunningham poučava 1 drži predavanja po svetu i vođi svoju školu u Njujorku od 1959. godine.

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