The May 16 roundtable Diaghilev/Cunningham: 1909/2009 was designed to celebrate two auspicious occasions—the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Sergei Diaghilev's legendary Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 and the 90th birthday of Merce Cunningham on April 16th of this year. With Cunningham's recent passing, the discussion has gained added significance. The Center is honored to have welcomed a group of panelists who were able to speak from both professional and personal perspectives about the choreographer's life.

In exploring the collaborative methods of two great alchemists of dance, the roundtable revealed a veritable who's who of the art world. From Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Satie, Picasso, Matisse, Nijinsky, and Balanchine to John Cage, Isamu Noguchi, Bruce Naumann, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns, the list of creative minds whose work inspired and nourished Diaghilev and Cunningham throughout their careers is mind-boggling.

Moderator Roger Copeland, Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College and author of Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance, opened the discussion by remarking that Diaghilev's Ballets Russes managed to "out-Wagner Wagner" by creating a true Gesamtkunstwerk in which the discrete elements added up to more than the sum of their parts. Joan Acocella, dance critic for The New Yorker, said that Diaghilev's company achieved an unprecedented level of popularity in Europe by creating an aesthetic in which the set designer and composer were as important as the choreographer. When people went to see Afternoon of a Faun in Paris in 1912, Acocella observed, 'it wasn't a dance event, but a music/set/choreography event."

Valda Setterfield, who performed with Cunningham's company from 1964 to 1974, trained with Marie Rambert and Tamara Karsavina, legendary dancers from the Ballets Russes. She described the unconventional methods of her teachers, who drew on the eclecticism of Diaghilev's collaborative approach. Acocella observed, "As much as Diaghilev was in charge, it was an organization run by artists collaborating constantly," and noted that painful disputes about authorship later emerged as a result of this collective approach. She added that the French, in addition to exoticizing the sexual frankness of the Russian dancers, believed they were able to collaborate so well because culturally they had no ego. But in fact the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky was a terrible collaborator who had an acutely difficult time explaining his ideas to other dancers. Despite his brilliance as a dancer, Nijinsky's career was cut short when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 29, and he spent the rest of his life in and out of mental hospitals.

In many ways, Diaghilev and Nijinsky paved the way for Cunningham's collaborations. Setterfield observed that Cunningham was able to involve artists like Johns, Stella, Naumann, and Cage by giving them the same freedom they were accustomed to in their own studios. In fact, Copeland added, Cunningham's collaborators often didn't share the same space until shortly before performances. Dancers might rehearse complicated material in silence before adding a soundscape at the final dress rehearsal.

Setterfield emphasized Cunningham's skill in choosing artistic collaborators. He not only gave them freedom; he knew the nature of their work, and they were his friends. Jonah Bokaer, a former dancer with Cunningham, pointed out that this arrangement was not only artistically expedient, but also economically practical, since these artists were willing to work for each other without charging a lot of money. Cunningham's greatest talent, Bokaer suggested, was in his process of delegation.

Copeland speculated that Cunningham empowered himself through his collaborations, noting, "You are much less likely to get creatively blocked if you have a constant stream of collaborative material." Setterfield revealed that Cunningham was not just a great collaborator, but also terrific partner on the dance floor. However, Cunningham's collaborative process changed as he aged, and physical limitations led him, in 1989, to start using a computer program called Life Forms (later Dance Forms) to choreograph his pieces. Instead of originating his choreography with living, breathing dancers, he formulated dances by manipulating onscreen, computer-generated figures. Bokaer felt that this retreat from the hands-on involvement described by Setterfield added a layer of difficulty to Cunningham's collaborative process.

In summing up the monumental accomplishments of Diaghilev and Cunningham, Acocella recalled a quote by George Orwell that captures the complex nature of artistic collaboration: "Two people making a work of art is like three people making a baby."
-Adam Ludwig