You’d never mistake Merce Cunningham for a traditionalist. A tap dancer growing up, the striking, hollow-faced innovator of postmodern movement is credited with creating some of the most influential and radical dance-theater works of the mid to late 20th century. He did so until his death in 2009, at the age of 90. But he didn’t do it alone.
“Common Time” induces an incredible, and in some ways subtle, realization of the scope and quality of the composite artistry of several of Cunningham’s masterpieces. For a work called Antic Meet (1958), Rauschenberg designed costumes, displayed in the exhibit, using fur coats and dresses made of parachute fabric; the material was reportedly so heavy that the dancers were dumbstruck when they put them on for the first time, since the outfits hampered their movement. A room filled with Mylar balloons, bouncing peacefully from wall to wall, is borrowed from Andy Warhol‘s installation Silver Clouds. Cunningham saw the work at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1966 and later asked Warhol for permission to use the balloons for a piece called Rainforest (1968), in which the dancers negotiated “free-wheeling anarchy through floating decor that cannot be controlled,” as former New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff once described it. The MCA also set up listening stations to take in scores by composers like David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi, and Cunningham’s longtime collaborator and future life partner John Cage, who famously composed the fragmented score of the choreographer’s first solo performance, Root of an Unfocus (1944), which laid the foundation for Cunningham’s “common time” practice.
Through 4/30: Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E. Chicago 312-280-2660mcachicago.org $12, $7 students and seniors, free for members, military, police and fire departments, veterans, and children 12 and under; Tue free for Illinois residents
