Sounddance/Springdance
by Nancy Dalva
Every two years, in the spring, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company plays the Kennedy Center, a theater where the company, and especially the choreographer, are held in high and affectionate regard. Indeed, among Merce Cunningham's many honors are those bestowed by the Kennedy Center. This is then, his house. And it is, too, our house, because it sits on the Potomac, in the city which belongs to the nation. The Cunningham company plays the world, and has for more than fifty years, but to see them in Washington is always somehow significant, just as to see them in Paris is somehow always magical, and to see them in California is to be drenched, somehow, in sunshine. That is, each city, each theater, each night has its own character, its own correspondences. One cannot escape the political in Washington, and so, although this choreography and this artist are as removed from that scrum as, say, the planet Neptune, there are force fields. read more