Educational Media Reviews Online

Disc 1- 53 min.
Disc 2- Uncut Single-Stage Captures, 173 min. Disc 3- Bonus Legacy Tour Repertory Excerpts, 90 min.

The Park Avenue Armory Event captures the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in December 2011 before the renown modern dance company disbanded. The term Event describes “site-specific choreographic collages”, Merce mash-ups of old and new choreography lasting fifty minutes. The Event shown in this DVD set took place at New York City’s huge Park Avenue Armory.

The set contains a complete event, raw footage of the performances used to create the complete event film, and a disc of excerpts from other Cunningham works. Disc 1 shows a full edited performance of one Event. The film successfully simulates the experience of being a viewer at the Armory, where an audience member might gaze at one stage, then take in another in the background, then focus in on a particular aspect of the choreography. Sometimes the camera shows musicians like composer Takehisa Kosugi performing on contraption-like instruments. This is just as fascinating as the choreography itself. The overall feeling of being at the performance does not detract from seeing the more discrete individual movements and group movement patterns of the choreography.

Disc 2, Uncut Single-Stage Captures, contains the raw footage for each of the three stages in the Event. Disc 3, Bonus Legacy Tour Repertory Excerpts, contains excerpts from 16 of Merce Cunningham’s works ranging from 1956 to 2009. The recordings are not necessarily contemporary to when the work was originally choreographed. For example, Suite for Five was choreographed between 1956-1958, but the footage shown is from Charles Atlas’ 2007 film; and Antic Meet (1958) is taken from a 1964 performance including Merce Cunningham. The credits helpfully providing this chronology are critical because performing arts work are so subject to their performance event.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company: Park Avenue Armory Event is highly recommended due to its historical significance as the last performance from one of the most important modern dance choreographers and because of the high quality with which it was produced; the inclusion of raw footage which focuses more on choreography rather than the film techniques used to create Disc 1; and the excerpts which seem ready made for educational purposes.

The segmented nature of this DVD would lend itself well to a streaming database, though the consequences of streaming video compression might mar the crispness of the DVD.