Recent book on Merce Cunningham

[dirac]

James Wolcott thumps the tub vigorously for Roger Copeland's “Merce Cunningham: the Modernizing of Modern Dance.”

I am reluctant to proffer advice to a formidable stylist like Wolcott, but I certainly do wish writers would avoid the hideous jargon phrase “major thrusts,” which I had hoped would go away at some point but now seems a permanent part of the journalistic landscape.

...........even after sixty years as a choreographer Cunningham is still considered too elfin and rarefied a cultural phenomenon to interest editors and reviewers, whose interest and knowledge of dance usually begins and ends with Balanchine. Balanchine is a prodigious genius, but his genius and biography have hardly gone undocumented, everybody whoever sat in the second ring at the State Theater and had a brownie at intermission thinks he's got a Balanchine book in him, whereas Cunningham's intricate strategems and askew marvels would tax the explicating skill of the late Hugh Kenner (whose tribute to Buckminster Fuller--Bucky--is a neglected classic).

Kenner never did get around to writing about dance, although he didn’t miss much else. I wish he had; Wolcott is right, Kenner and Cunningham would have been a dream pairing of author and subject.

[sandik]

James Wolcott thumps the tub vigorously for Roger Copeland's “Merce Cunningham:  the Modernizing of Modern Dance.” 

........... everybody whoever sat in the second ring at the State Theater and had a brownie at intermission thinks he's got a Balanchine book in him.

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Ouch!

Copeland worked on this book for many years, and I was so glad to see it finally come out. He's very knowledgeable about C'ham, certainly worth reading.