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Views on Stage (2004)
Music: John Cage, ASLSP and Music for Two
Décor: Ernesto Neto, Other Animal
Costumes: James Hall
Lighting: Josh Johnson
First performed in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the conclusion of the company’s tour of six cities in Britain in October 2004, Views on Stage is the stage version of Cunningham’s latest filmdance, made in collaboration with Charles Atlas. The Cunningham Dance Foundation, which has received annual grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, received a grant in 2004 for making broadcast quality films of works by Cunningham, with the intention of making them available to universities and scholars. As the first project funded by this grant, the dance company filmed a new work, under Atlas’s direction, during August. Filming took place in Westbeth, in the Merce Cunningham Studio itself and on the roof outside, and also in a “green” studio in Chelsea for sequences in the chroma-key process. As with earlier video- and filmdances by Cunningham and Atlas, it was intended that the new piece, finally edited in two versions, Views on Camera and Views on Video, would be adapted for the stage.
The choreography is in several discrete sections, for men, for women, for couples, with one quartet by two women and two men. Ernesto Neto’s décor is a hanging sculpture made of rubberized fabric. James Hall’s unisex costumes consist of a knee-length white skirt with a blue brocaded top.
The edited versions of Views on Camera and Views on Video, the latter incomplete, as a work in progress, were screened for the first time during the company’s residency at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in March 2005.
Views on Stage was commissioned by the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN, Stanford Lively Arts at Stanford University, and Dance Umbrella. Views on Stage was made possible, in part, by the Howard Gilman Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and through public support from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. |
