Sketching a Scene

Legendary modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham is known for his experiments in disorder and chaos, so it’s only fitting that the elements of “Invention: Cunningham & Collaborators,” an exhibit now open at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, are deliberately fuzzy. The show explores the choreographer’s artistic collaborations, notably those with composer John Cage and designer Robert Rauschenberg.Like Mr. Cunningham’s work, the overall impression of the show depends on when and in what order its elements are experienced. There are two entrances to the gallery, and various days may offer a Cage piece performed by Nurit Tilles on the prepared piano in the middle of the gallery or a screening of a dance performance created specially for the exhibit by the Cunningham Repertory Group. It’s hard to plan a trip to the gallery because not all the dates for these special engagements have been released, but that seems oddly appropriate, given emphasis that Mr. Cunningham and his collaborators place on chance.Like a piece of Mr. Cage’s music, the exhibit often seems more like a scattering of artistic ideas than a representative indicator of Mr. Cunningham’s oeuvre.Artifacts from his collaborators’ work abound as much as do photographs of actual dances. The effect is slightly disorienting. The pieces are packed together in the gallery’s small space, and some are fairly inscrutable. “August Pace” is a curious sketch showing eight numbered human figures, each corresponding to seemingly random cartoonish drawings such as a rocket, a mushroom, and a butterfly.At times, clear connections develop between the pieces, allowing a narrative of collaboration to develop. Such is the case with “Beach Birds,” a collection of Marsha Skinner’s original designs that progress to Michael O’Neill’s photographs of Mr. Cunningham’s realized choreography.But the intended effect of the exhibit is to come off less as an account of the artist’s career and more like a scrapbook of his many collaborations. Mr. Cunningham, however, never yields the spotlight. His dance ideology literally hangs over everything else. His quips of his detailing his four “key discoveries” are hung on posters suspended above the exhibit’s pieces.“The principle is the idea of two separate identities which, when they come together, produce something which neither one of the two could predict,” Mr. Cunningham said at a preview on Monday. “That is, the result is something unknown, some kind of possible discovery.”Until October 13 (40 Lincoln Center Plaza, between 63rd and 64th streets, 212-870-1630).

Sketching a Scene

Sketching a Scene

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