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“Can you get my drink, and I’ll get Merce?“
In sure circles — OK, mine — that identify can belong to just one individual: Merce Cunningham, the Twentieth-century choreographer who reshaped trendy dance. Over the previous few weeks, his identify has come up within the strangest of locations: “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
On latest episodes, Sutton Stracke traveled to Spain together with her fellow Housewives. Along with racks of designer garments, she introduced Cunningham’s ashes packed in a Ziploc bag. Cunningham, it seems, was one of the crucial vital males in her pre-“Housewives” life, and he or she needed to launch the ashes “in a big place and make this a very significant journey.”
Dismay ensued. “Put me in a Birkin, positive,” Kyle Richards, one other Housewife, stated. “But a Ziploc? No.”
And out of Erika Girardi’s tipsy mouth poured this gem at dinner: “Merce is within the purse.”
Worlds are really colliding. Cunningham, who died in 2009 at 90, is an indelible a part of dance historical past however much less acquainted to most of the people. As Stracke instructed her castmates, “He’s an actual large deal.” How large? Stracke defined that he was a founder of contemporary dance.
Girardi requested, “With Martha Graham and all them?”
“Yes,” Stracke stated.
“Twyla?” Girardi stated, referring to Twyla Tharp. Girardi, who performs pop music as Erika Jayne, has lengthy labored with the choreographer Mikey Minden, and is aware of a factor or two.
“Twyla studied underneath him,” Stracke stated.
“OK,” Girardi stated with detectable delight, “There you go.”
Cunningham and his companion, the composer John Cage, believed that music and dance may exist independently. Cunningham additionally used methods of likelihood to find out, say, the construction of a dance by rolling cube or utilizing the I-Ching. This “Housewives” plotline is like shaking out a pair of sixes. It appears in opposition to each odd.
Stracke, blonde with a peppy, Southern accent, is on the kooky aspect however perhaps probably the most no-nonsense of the Housewives. (My favourite non-Merce second was when she set a timer throughout a purchasing journey.) In her 20s and an aspiring dancer, she labored on the Cunningham Dance Foundation in New York as a studio manager and later as an affiliate director of growth. It wasn’t uncommon for individuals in his orbit to have been given a small envelope of his ashes.
“Merce and I had a bond instantly,” Stracke stated on the present. “I believe he appreciated me as a dancer and he appreciated my work ethic. And I’d go over to his condominium, and he would prepare dinner. He additionally appreciated, I suppose, how I watered his vegetation.”
Did Stracke, who’s on the board of American Ballet Theater, create the ashes arc to make Cunningham a bit bit extra of a family identify?
Last summer season the choreographer Sarah Michelson created a response to a Cunningham work that featured a aircraft flying over Rockaway Beach, Queens, pulling a banner: “Dear Merce Cunningham — You Busy RN?” Now the query is “Dear Merce Cunningham — What Are You Thinking RN?” Would he be mortified for his stays to be on “Housewives”? Amused?
Maybe Stracke actually simply desires to unfold the gospel of contemporary dance. Some credit score goes to Girardi: “I sort of really feel like a loser for not understanding about him,” she stated. “Because I do know a lot about, like, Bob Fosse, Alvin Ailey or different greats. So once I stated to Mikey” — the choreographer Minden — “‘Like, who’s Merce Cunningham?’ He goes, ‘How dare you?’ And I bought checked by my very own good friend.”
Stracke introduced the ashes to Sitges, in Catalonia, describing it as one of many first locations Cunningham’s firm carried out in Europe. The group did carry out there in 1966, however by then it had been to Europe loads, having accomplished a world tour in 1964. Oh, no matter. Trevor Carlson, the previous govt director of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, lives in close by Barcelona. He and Stracke are associates. He joined the Housewives for dinner and the Merce send-off.
When the day got here to launch the ashes, Stracke was stuffed with emotion — considering additionally about her father’s demise and the breakup of her marriage. “It’s actually over 20 years of my life that I’m beginning to understand I must let go of,” she stated.
She selected a view overlooking the ocean. “All proper, let’s do it,” she stated to Carlson. With an arm wrapped round him, she tossed the ashes into the water. Soon there have been screams. The Housewives, standing off to the aspect, weren’t protected: Merce was out of the purse — and speckled onto their attire, their faces, their hair.
“Sorry, women!” Stracke yelled.
Once Girardi may need felt like a loser for not understanding who Cunningham was. Now she was mad. “I don’t know this man,” she stated. “I don’t wish to style this man.”
Stracke was full of glee. “Merce didn’t get on me in any respect,” she stated. “He was identified for these nice leaps. He leaped over me and bought all over these women! It was so good.”
Choreographically talking, it was super. And similar to Merce.
