REVIEW: ‘Cunningham’
Photo: Cunningham tells the story of Merce Cunningham and his influential choreography. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Home Entertainment / Provided by official site with permission.
Merce Cunningham’s choreography and influence in the dance world cannot be understated. This purveyor of unique and modern artistry led a powerful career for many decades, reshaping one’s idea of how movement can be presented on a stage before an audience saturated (and perhaps exhausted) with more traditional techniques.
Cunningham’s skills are the subject of an exquisite new documentary from filmmaker Alla Kovgan. Rather than presenting the choreographer’s life from birth to death, the director decides to showcase as much of his work as possible, focusing on his early career and his seminal mastery, all the while trying to give the viewer a sense of what it must have been like to share a stage with the the master dance-maker.
Each of the dances that Kovgan decides to re-stage are memorable sequences in Cunningham, which is now available on DVD and digital HD from Magnolia Home Entertainment. Better yet, rather than simply mounting them in a typical dance space, the filmmaker has these movements play out in the most unique of environs: everything from a New York City rooftop to a tucked-away forest to a secluded tunnel. The locations of these pieces draw the eye in, inviting the audience to look at and consider the skills on display. Smartly and quite deftly, Kovgan also places the new re-stagings of these choreographic movements alongside historic footage of Cunningham and his company performing the same routines. The resemblances are uncanny.
Cunningham, like so many choreographers of his time, was probably not the easiest person to work with. He seemed something of a perfectionist, yet he also welcomed free spirits to join his troupe. As a dance-maker, he evidently tried to foster creativity, placing bodies into spaces and guiding them, but not restricting their potential. The result is a variety of movements and dance vocabulary that simultaneously expressive and grand, yet intimate and raw. The mark that Cunningham left on the art form was unquestionably stirring and no doubt the reason that he amassed a loyal and ever-growing fanbase.
Several of his company members offer insights into how the choreographer would work, and the director lets these voices float over actual footage of the maestro at work. That is such a welcome storytelling technique and immediately separates Cunningham from so many other talking-head documentaries that would rather “tell” than “show” why someone is an iconoclast.
Much appreciation must also go to Kovgan for focusing on the years when Cunningham collaborated with the likes of composer John Cage and artist Robert Rauschenberg. These early connections helped the choreographer find his vocabulary and style, both of which would make him a household name in the modern-dance world for decades.
This is very much a non-biopic biography film because it’s not interested in the soup-to-nuts narrative. Instead, it’s finely focused over its 93 minutes, looking at inspiration and the finding of one’s choreographic voice. That’s enough for a film, and those who are motivated — and there will be many who are motivated after watching Cunningham — can seek out the full history of this remarkable artist and the rest of the legacy he left the world.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Cunningham (2019). Featuring Merce Cunningham. Written and directed by Alla Kovgan. Running time: 93 minutes. Rating: 
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