Performance

BEACH BIRDS 

Cunningham said of his choreography for "Beach Birds", “It is all based on individual physical phrasing. The dancers don’t have to be exactly together. They can dance like a flock of birds when they suddenly take off.” A work for eleven dancers, the rhythm for "Beach Birds" was much more fluid than other Cunningham dances, so that the sections could differ in length from performance to performance. John Cage composed the music, and painter Marsha Skinner provided the costumes and décor. The dancers were dressed identically in all white leotards and tights, with black gloves. Skinner’s backcloth was a white scrim on which the light varied in color and intensity, decided by a lighting plot that was devised using chance methods. While the timings did not relate to the dance structure, the gradual changes of light have been interpreted to imitate those that might occur from dawn to dusk on a beach.

- David Vaughan
 

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Cunningham has written: "The dance gives me the feeling of switching channels on the TV...the action varies from slow formal sections to rapid broken-up sequences where it is difficult to see all the complexity." Many people have commented on the elegiac nature of the closing moments of the piece. The décor for BIPED is an exploration of the possibilities of the animation technology of motion capture. The digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar collaborated with Cunningham, who, working with two dancers, choreographed 70 phrases that were transposed into digital images. These animated images, as well as abstract patterns (vertical and horizontal lines, dots, clusters), are projected on to a scrim at the front of the stage, behind which the live dancers may be seen. Cunningham also used computer software, DanceForms, to develop the choreography for the dance, which is in several sections: solos, duets, trios, and ensemble dances. The music by Gavin Bryars, also called Biped, is partly recorded, and partly played live on acoustic instruments. Suzanne Gallo’s costumes use a metallic fabric that reflects light. At one point in the dance the men, clothed in pajama-like outfits in a transparent fabric, bring on tops in the same fabric for the women. Aaron Copp devised the lighting, dividing the stage floor into squares lit in what looked like a random sequence, as well as the curtained booths at the back of the stage that permit the dancers to appear and disappear.

 

- David Vaughan