Quartet (1982)

Music: David Tudor, Sextet for Seven
Costumes: Mark Lancaster

Despite its title, Quartet is a dance for five, performed alongside Tudor's scoreSextet for Seven. Often described as a somber work, Quartet shows emotional and tangible dependencies and restrictions, with a single male dancer, originally portrayed by Cunningham, in the role of the outsider. The other dancers move for the most part independently of him, though occasionally they mirror his movements, or he is caught between two of them. Toward the end, after a small paroxysm, he passes unnoticed from the scene, but in the few remaining moments the other dancers' movements revert to the restricted, almost robotic shifts of weight with which they began, as though their existence still depended on his presence. The chilling music is a live electronic composition for "six homogenous voices and one wandering voice," and Lancaster designed the cosumes in hues of crimson, blue, and green. Quartet premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.

The revival of Quartet is a commission of Théâtre de a Ville/Festival d'Automne à Paris.