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Ocean (1994)
Music: David Tudor, Soundings: Ocean Diary
and Andrew Culver, Ocean 1-96
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Marsha Skinner
Ocean, a 90-minute work (without intermission) for the whole company, is performed in the round. The first performances were in the Cirque Royal in Brussels in May 1994. Subsequent performances took place in the Muziektheater, Amsterdam; Teatro La Fenice, Venice (both theaters were adapted for the purpose); at the University of California, Berkeley (in a gymnasium); at the Lincoln Center Festival 1996 in New York (in a specially constructed outdoor venue); Waterfront Hall, Belfast; Le Zénith, Montpellier (a rock venue); Niigata Performing Arts Center, Niigata, Japan (a theater in the round). The last of these performances was in 1998. After some portions were performed in Events, notably in a circus building in Reims, France, in 2002, it was decided to reconstruct the whole work. In 2005 it was presented at the Lincoln Center Festival 2005, in the Rose Theater in New York City. In September 2006 it was performed in the Roundhouse in London.
The piece is in nineteen sections. Cunningham habitually uses a chance process based on the number of hexagrams in the I Ching, except that in this case he doubled the number owing to the length of the dance; there are, therefore, 128 possible phrases. There are solos, duets, trios, quartets, and ensembles involving the entire cast of fourteen dancers.
The design is by Marsha Skinner, who previously designed Beach Birds and Change of Address for Cunningham. She has written that for the lighting she took her inspiration from Moby Dick and for the costumes from Homer’s “wine-dark sea.”
The revival of Ocean is a co-commission of the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN and Dance Umbrella. Major support provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and members of the Board of Directors of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. |
