A dança no You Tube II: Septet, de Merce Cunningham

Septet (1953*)

Coreografia de Merce Cunningham. Música de Eric Satie. Figurinos de Remy Charlip
Estreia da 1ª versão: 22 Agosto 1953, Black Mountain, Estados Unidos da América

«'Septet' [...] proved as delightful as it was revealing, historically. It is not a major work, but it has a clarity of movement that matches the clarity of sound so important to Satie. Mr. Cunningham has since created more complex and sophisticated pieces. Never, however, has he been so pure. 'Septet' is a rarity in the Cunnigham canon. [...] It is reportedly the last piece Mr. Cunningham choreographed along traditional lines before he embarked upon the regular use of chance procedures as a compositional device. [...]

Satie was a gentle avant-gardist in his own time, and both the gentleness and experimental nature of the choreography pay him homage. Satie, like Marcel Duchamp, was especially important to John Cage, Mr. Cunningham's longtime musical advisor, and Mr. Cunningham himself has turned to Satie as inspiration on numerous occasions. [...] It is difficult to imagine that Satie was once accused of writing thin music. Here, it sounds positively rich and rumbling. And perhaps the reason 'Septet' may yet look startling is that the dancing often moves against the music - stillness against the aural ripples. Simplicity is hard to achieve, but Mr. Cunningham achieves it. There are seven sections to match the music, but only six dancers [...] Remy Charlip's original costumes are soothingly pastel. 'Septet' is a plotless suite of several dances, but at its origins it carried program notes that associated each section with titles like garden, music hall, teahouse, playground, morgue, 'distance' and 'the end.' Mr. Cunningham was said to have been concerned with joy and sorrow, and an overriding theme of 'eros.'

These connotations, if they were ever visible, are at best subliminal in this production. We see instead dancers who look suddenly very young as they shyly shake hands or peer over a shoulder. As early as 1953, the year of his company's official debut, Mr. Cunningham was organizing stage space without a central focus and creating an off-center look to the body that made it look interestingly askew. Those who assert that he has become balletic in recent years will note that much of the movement includes steps such as bourees and chaines.

The initial moment, with the three women standing on half toe or in profile with arms curved or out, radiates a neo-classical image that Mr. [Robert] Swinston** then shatters with an open-mouthed silent shout and a superbly rendered bumptious solo. The duets and quartets that follow are definite encounters, increasingly quick until the couples form a diagonal, the women tilted downward by the men and raised into overt embraces. This hint of passion is resolved in a classical image: Mr. Swinston pulling his three Graces behind him. The fleeting turbulence subsides; all six dancers form a chain that breaks apart. Miss [Karen] Radford**, arching over, walks backward into the wings guided by Mr. Swinston. For no reason (or was it 'eros'?) the image of a centaur flashed through this viewer's mind.

Anna Kisselgoff

in MERCE CUNNINGHAM'S 'SEPTET', crítica ao espectáculo publicada no New York Times a 08 Março 1987, em Nova Yorque.

* A estreia da peça ocorreu em 1953, mas a data a que esta gravação se reporta,1964, corresponde ao ano em que a peça foi apresentada pela última vez antes de ser re-integrada no repertório da Merce Cunningham Dance Company em 1987. **os nomes dos intérpretes citados referem-se à apresentação na qual se sustenta a crítica (1987), não correspondendo, por isso, aos intérpretes no vídeo, datado de 1964. Ver site da companhia, com biografia do coreógrafo e lista de livros e vídeos onde se podem encontrar versões de Septet. Ver aqui um perfil, com vídeo incluído, do coreógrafo. Ver aqui entrevista com excertos de espectáculos em formato vídeo. O catálogo da exposição Drawings and Notations, sobre o trabalho de Cunningham, que se apresentou no Museu de Serralves em 1999 pode ser adquirido na livraria do museu. Ver aqui algumas das imagens incluídas nesse catálogo.