'Cunningham' A Review

Cunningham is a documentary about the life and career of dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham. Through archival rehearsal and interview footage as well as some archival and contemporary interviews used as defacto voice over narration cut with notable Cunningham pieces restaged by modern dancers we get a sense of the electric artists oeuvre if not the man himself.

The film consists of some beautiful, thoughtful montage-style composition of mostly black-and-white footage taken by Cunningham and his company of their rehearsals and various performances from 1950-1980 along with provocatively staged(almost exclusively in non-traditional performance spaces) and costumed dance pieces choreographed by Cunningham and contemporarily done. It's an interesting, almost abstract, impressionistic way to approach the now pretty tired bio-doc relying most heavily on the subject's artistic discipline to convey who he is.

We get to know Cunningham as an artist but we know virtually nothing about him as a person. Which isn't necessary however there are implications and hints of him being a narcissistic guru-like control freak that that period in NYC seemed to cultivate in spades for all the various arts which somewhat shadow what a singular creative he clearly was.

A beautiful bold piece of filmmaking fluidly translating one of the most inaccessible artforms, dance, through the screen, although it's examination of it's central subject is somewhat perfunctory.

See It.