Educational Media Reviews Online

The 2 DVD Split Sides can be described as a straightforward recording of Merce Cunningham’s 2003 choreographic work of the same name. Or, it could be described as an opportunity for you, the DVD viewer, to allow chance to decide your viewing. Either way, this DVD will be entrancing for those with the patience to watch filmed stage performances.

The premise for the DVD version of Split Sides is based on the premise of the live performance. In the live performance, an onstage roll of dice determines which elements will be chosen for that night’s show. The elements of options are two different costume designs, set designs, lighting designs, choreographies, and sound designs. Thirty-two combinations are possible.

There are fewer options to choose from on the DVD. Here, the viewer chooses between the disc with Choreography A followed by Choreography B (Split Sides 45), or vice-versa (Split Sides 46), and three different sound options. Each Choreography is only 20 minutes, so viewers can experiment by watching an entire 40 minute set, then trying it with different music, trying a different DVD, or watching just portions.

While this DVD is a “straightforward” recorded performance, it is a recording of a work that is elegantly, hypnotically, simple. This is a result of the sum of the ingredients. First of these ingredients is the unobtrusive cinematography from director and frequent Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas, which shows the performance from the theater audience’s perspective: full stage or full body, but never angled or extremely close up. Ambient electronic music by Radiohead or Sigur Rós, or natural sound only provides the next ingredient. The music tracks accompanying each 20 minute Choreography section transition smoothly into each other, as do the dancers’ unitards of grey and black brushstrokes to colorful paint splatters, accompanied by similarly styled backdrops.

Of course, the dance too contributes to the blissful elegance. The transitions from individual movement to movement or from phrase to phrase are often fluid. There is no denying that the vocabulary of the technique here is rooted in the Western ballet family of languages, where men lead and women lean. Yet it is a technique that combines a buoyant sense resulting from little jumps, and elegant lines of adagio leg extensions with subtle curves in the spine.

There only a few concerns to be mentioned about this DVD. It contains no chapters, perhaps because it was meant to be viewed as one performance. Also I was unable to discern where and when Split Sides 45 and Split Sides 46 where performed.

This DVD is highly recommended for those curious about modern dance – even if some viewers can only stand this style of dance for five minutes. Split Sides can be used as an example of the evolution of plot-less art from the mid-20th century United States to the 21st century. Merce Cunningham’s choreography here would be a wonderful companion to works from visual and performing artists with similar histories.