A Memorable Turn of Events From Merce Cunningham

“Not so much an evening of dances as the experience of dance.” That’s how Merce Cunningham defines his Event programs, those unbroken, 90-minute collages of unidentified repertory that showcase his entire company in challenging new contexts. More than 300 have been mounted since the first in Vienna 33 years ago; the latest occurred Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

For performers and audiences alike, the landscape of dance changes in a Cunningham Event--starting with the effect of different costumes, accompaniments, sequencing and combinations of forces upon familiar choreographies. Ultimately, the biggest difference is conceptual: the idea that choreography isn’t just a product to be labeled, dated and put in an archive when a newer product arrives, but rather a flow of creativity over time, a way of working, a life in art.

At the Alex, the 15 Cunningham dancers performed in front of a panoramic Robert Rauschenberg painting on an otherwise bare stage, wearing gleaming purple unitards credited to Rauschenberg and Suzanne Gallo. The musicians (most of them uncredited) included Takehisa Kosugi, David Behrman, Stuart Dempster and Jon Gibson.

The repertory excerpts began with “Locale” and reportedly featured a number of doubled duets: two pairs sharing what Cunningham had assigned to only one couple in the source works. However, the strongest impression in the first half may have been the quicksilver evanescence of the dancing as a whole: the image of handsome young people (never hurrying, never sweating) surging into formations and technical feats that lasted barely long enough for audience perception, much less response, before something equally engaging took place.

Fourteen dancers enter, form a grouping--a kinetic exclamation

point--and leave, all in less than a minute. A standing man suddenly is holding a woman waist high, perpendicular to his body--and just as suddenly she is gone. Now you’re watching a dazzling cavalcade of unlikely balances or partnering innovations or jumps piled upon jumps--all smooth, seemingly effortless, uninsistent.

And there’s always more: dancers offstage wrapped in blankets, drinking bottled water, warming up to enter again. Think about what you’ve just seen, or concentrate on the music for a moment, and you’ll miss something that somebody else will tell you was a highlight.

And sometimes you have to make choices: for example, between the two duets and one trio evolving at the same time in different areas of the stage early in the evening--with each of these unrelated choreographies as carefully crafted and performed as if it were intended to be the only dancing on view.

Eventually, major contrasts become events within the Event: the shift, for instance, into the vaudeville of “Deli Commedia,” with four dancers in colored jumpsuits and red sneakers prancing through an antic show-biz/ballroom anthology. Or the grave “Eon” passage for two women in liquid, floor-length gray sleeves: a compendium of mysterious gestures that slowly expand into whole-body statements without losing their solemnity.

And, near the end, in comes Cunningham himself in black pants and pale lavender shirt, carrying a wooden chair. OK, at 77, he’s entitled to sit this one out, but his whirlwind arm movement and facial motion while seated soon lead to a runner’s crouching stance and then a little twitchy stork-walking--his hands, neck and face always independently restless and searching. Then he, too, vanishes--one more image at once ephemeral and memorable in this free-form summary of his art.

Besides Cunningham, the dancers Saturday were Lisa Boudreau, Maydelle Breceda, Thomas Caley, Michael Cole, Jean Freebury, Frederic Gafner, China Laudisio, Matthew Mohr, Banu Ogan, Jared Phillips, Glen Rumsey, Jeannie Steele, Derry Swan, Robert Swinston and Cheryl Therrien.

Think about what you’ve just seen, or concentrate on the music for a moment, and you’ll miss something that somebody else will tell you was a highlight.