"Two giants of dance died last year: Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham. Right now audiences aren’t being deprived of seeing why their names are written permanently in lights in dance history (Bausch’s company performs in Edinburgh and London later this year, Cunningham’s is in London in October), but after 2011 they may be. Cunningham’s company will close, while Bausch’s will be in its last of an uncertain three-year grace period. It was in this light that Frances Byrnes made a remarkable programme broadcast last night.A world that carries on with rotten Swan Lakes and interminable Lloyd Webber reruns will never again see Biped, Summerspace or Nelken. And the problems that explain why that becomes so could mean that within 25 years we will never again see Mark Morris's L'Allegro or Ashton's Scenes de ballet or Forsythe's Eidos:Telos. Major contemporary works of art gone, their makers half-forgotten. 'Perhaps we should go and see dances like we go to see a person we love, and whose time is short. Now, soon or never,” said Byrnes, her soft voice shaking with protest."
The fact that Pina Bausch and Merce Cunnigham's work may disappear will leave us all poorer--but it is the telling of it here that is absolutely devastating. The last line in particular provides perfect pathos: "Who in the results-obsessed, bean-counting world of today is willing to support an artform that uniquely abstains from saving itself?" Let's hope someone.
No comments:
Post a Comment