Dance Umbrella 2008: 30 September - 8 November

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Merce Cunningham Associated Events
Please note: tickets only available through Barbican Box Office

Technology and Culture
Fri 3 Oct
5pm – 6.15pm
The Pit | Free Event*
A panel discussion exploring the ways in which technology and culture can work together to open up access to the arts. The panel includes the Company’s Executive Director, Trevor Carlson, discussing MCDC’s pioneering project Mondays with Merce. *Free event, but please reserve a place via Barbican’s Box Office: 0845 120 7553

MCDC Family Movement Workshop
Sat 4 Oct
12.30pm – 1.30pm (8-10yo) & 3.15pm – 4.15pm (11-16yo)
The Pit | Tickets: £5
Two sessions led by MCDC representatives. Ages 8-10 play with dice-like 'move cubes' to understand how chance operations work. Ages 11-16 focus on movement exploration and composition using Merce’s choreographic principles and create short dances using ideas generated from the session. No prior dance experience required. Please wear suitable clothing. No unaccompanied adults and everyone needs a ticket. Why not enhance this workshop experience by attending the Open Rehearsal at 2pm?

Open Rehearsal
Sat 4 Oct
2pm – 3pm
Barbican Theatre | Free Event*

An opportunity to see the dancers rehearse for the evening performance of CRWDSPCR. *Free event, but please reserve a place via Barbican’s Box Office: 0845 120 7553

Cunningham on Film
Sat 4 Oct, throughout the day
Cinema 3: Barbican Centre
Tickets: £6 (£5 concs / Merce Cunningham performance ticket holders) OR
£4 (each film when booking two or more film programmes)

Working in collaboration with filmmakers-in-residence Charles Atlas and Elliot Caplan, Merce Cunningham pioneered choreography for the camera, recognising that film and television require a completely different use of space than the stage. A number of screenings in Cinema 3 showcase these collaborations:

10.15am
Westbeth (pg*)
Merce Cunningham began working with director and video artist Charles Atlas in 1974 and Westbeth marks their first collaborative use of video. The piece is in six sections in which different choreographic and filming techniques (close-up, deep focus, multiple cameras and editing together separate movement segments) are employed to reveal how television changes our way of looking and distorts our sense time. 1975 Dir. Charles Atlas 32 min.
+
Beach Birds For Camera (pg*)
Adapted from the stage piece made with long time collaborator, composer John Cage, this is one of the most beautiful dances that Merce Cunningham has made for the camera. Emmy Award-winning director Elliot Caplan experiments with combining different shooting locations as well as first black and white, and then colour film and Dolby stereo sound.
1993 Dir. Elliot Caplan 28min.

11.30am
Locale (pg*)
In this film, danced to music by Takehisa Kosugi (Interspersion), the camera movements have been choreographed as precisely as those of the dancers. Director Charles Atlas also designed the costumes for the piece, inspired by gradations of grey-based tones used in tuning black and white television monitors. 1980 dir. Charles Atlas 30min.
+
Roamin' I (pg*)
A behind-the-scenes documentary showing the filming of Locale in which Charles Atlas reveals, without narration, how the dance was created for the camera. The title may be read as either "Roman Numeral One" or "Roaming Eye". 1980 Dir. Charles Atlas 15min.

12.30pm
CRWDSPCR (pg*)
In this film Elliot Caplan documents daily life at the Cunningham Dance Studio during the creation of the dance CRWDSPCR for the stage. Cunningham explains how he uses the choreographic software programme Lifeforms (now known as Danceforms) while interviews with dancers reveal what it is like to translate and learn the computer generated movements. With contributions also from the composer John King (blues 99) and costume designer Mark Lancaster, Caplan provides a comprehensive insight into how the piece evolved during the rehearsal process. 1996 Dir. Elliot Caplan 55min.

2.45pm
Views On Camera (pg*)
2005 Dir. Charles Atlas 24min.
+
Views On Video (pg*)
Merce Cunningham's latest collaboration with Charles Atlas was filmed in August 2004 at the Merce Cunningham Studios, Westbeth and at Shadow Studios, New York City evolving into two separate works with music (ALSP and Music for Two) by John Cage. Views on Video is a variation on the dance captured in Views on Camera incorporating behind-the-scenes footage and digital manipulation. The stage version of the dance is called Views on Stage.
2005 Dir. Charles Atlas 28min.

Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance (pg*)
Sat 4 Oct, 4pm
Cinema 3: Barbican Centre
Tickets: £8.50 (£6 concs / Merce Cunningham performance ticket holders)

Screening introduced by MCDC archivist David Vaughan. In Charles Atlas' comprehensive documentary Merce Cunningham looks back over his prolific career from his student days, describing his working methods and how he has embraced new forms of technology. Along with contributions from Cunningham's friends, colleagues and scholars, Atlas includes rare archival footage of his early work in the company of Martha Graham and focuses on more recent works including BIPED which uses computer generated images as an element of the dance. 2000 Dir. Charles Atlas 90min.

*local classification

Part of barbicanbite08

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