Crises (1960)


Music: Conlon Nancarrow
(from Rhythm Studies for Player Piano)
Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting: Megan Byrne

This dance was first performed in the Thirteenth American Dance Festival, then held at Connecticut College, New London, in the summer of 1960. Gordon Mumma, one of the company musicians, drew Cunningham’s attention to the Rhythm Studies for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow (who created them by punching holes in player piano rolls), which had recently been issued on a long-playing record. Cunningham decided to use a selection of them as the accompaniment for the dance.

John Cage described Crises as “a dramatic, though not a narrative, dance concerned with decisive moments in the relationship between a man and four women.” The original cast consisted of Cunningham, Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Judith Dunn, and Marilyn Wood. Crises remained in the repertory until 1965; it was briefly revived in January 1970 at BAM, when Viola Farber of the original cast returned as a guest artist.

The dance was reconstructed for the Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group by Carolyn Brown and Carol Teitelbaum, in preparation for its revival by the French company Ballet de Lorraine. It returned to the repertory of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 2006, with Rashaun Mitchell (who had danced in the RUG revival) in Cunningham’s role, and first performed at the Joyce Theater in NY in October of that year.

The revival of Crises was made possible through public support from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

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