eyeSpace (2007)


Duration: 40 minutes
Music: David Behrman's Long Throw and/or
Annea Lockwood's Jitterbug
Décor & Costumes: Daniel Arsham
Lighting: Josh Johnson

eyeSpace was originally conceived to have multiple iterations. The second version received its first performance in Miami in Feb. 2007, lasting 40 minutes and featuring music by David Behrman and décor and costumes by artist Daniel Arsham. A third version was presented in Cedar Falls, Iowa in March 2007, lasting 40 minutes, with music by Annea Lockwood and the Arsham décor and costumes. MCDC reserves the right to determine which version of the score is played at each particular venue.

David Behrman's Long Throw
Musicians Required: 1 person on piano, one person on laptop, and 1-3 other variable instruments.

Description
Drone-like, minimal, electro-acoustic music with lush harmonies, employing Cage-style piano preparations.

From the Composer
Last spring, around the time when the Merce Cunningham Dance Company generously invited me to be one of the composers contributing new music to eyeSpace, I was listening to a vinyl double album called John Cage: Music for keyboard 1935-1948, which I had produced in 1969 for Columbia Records. I was listening to it again because New World Records had expressed interested in re-issuing the recording as part of their Anthology of Recorded American Music.

Hearing that music again after almost four decades was a delightful fresh rediscovery. I felt close especially to Music for Marcel Duchamp, a spare, elegant piece for prepared piano which John Cage composed in 1947.

It occurred to me that the eyeSpace music that I'm working on will be premiered in 2007, the sixtieth anniversary of Music for Marcel Duchamp. I reflected on the close relationship among Duchamp, John Cage, and Merce over the decades; on the long, distinguished trajectory of Merce and his Company; and also remembered that my own first commission to make music for the Company, Walkaround Time in 1968, had involved the art of Duchamp.

The new piece suggests a metaphoric link between 2007 and 1947. It has a piano part which includes preparations that John Cage used for his 1947 piece and evokes something of the quality of that music. It also makes use of 21st Century digital technology—music software and sound sensors—and has performance roles for the core musicians of the Company in 2007: Christian Wolff, Takehisa Kosugi, John King, and Stephan Moore. The music moves through a number of contrasting sections in which computer generated textures are interwoven with the live sounds of the violin, the electric guitar and the prepared piano.

View more images in the Merce Cunningham Flickr Galleries


Decor:
Daniel Arsham, ODE/EON. A realistic sculpture of an art deco theatre façade, placed at the rear of the stage. The bottom of the façade is sliced, and hangs above.

Costumes:
Daniel Arsham: Reflective silver metallic full-body unitards.

Lighting:
Design by MCDC Director of Production Josh Johnson. A limited color palette, film noir-ish. Chiaroscuro beams of light through the décor; shadows and slowly shifting tones on stage.


eyeSpace was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project, a program administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. eyeSpace was commissioned in part by Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, FL; University of California at Davis; and The Joyce Theater’s Stephen and Cathy Weinroth fund for New York.

Daniel Arsham’s décor commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami and the Cunningham Dance Foundation.

Music commissioned by Cunningham Dance Foundation and support for International Cloud Atlas provided by The John Cage Trust and Betty Freeman.