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A CONVERSATION WITH MATHILDE MONNIER
By Kate Mattingly
Merce Cunningham, perhaps best known for
his contributions to the rethinking of composition and the relationship between
movement and music, has also exerted wide-spread influence on artists of the 20th
and 21st centuries: the list of people who passed through the
Cunningham studios, were inspired by his ideas, and performed his choreography
reads like a roster of Who's Who in Contemporary Performance Today.
It was in his studio in the 1960s, at the
time at the intersection of 14th street and 6th avenue in Manhattan, that
Robert Dunn taught a group of artists who would later become Judson Dance
Theater. More recently artists like Frey Faust, Jonah Bokaer and Frédéric Gafner
(Foufois d'Immobilite) were performers in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
before creating their own approaches to teaching and producing work.
But one artist in particular who trained at
the Cunningham studios in the 1980s has since gone on to create an impact
similar in scope and influence to Cunningham's legacy.
Mathilde Monnier, now director of the
Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, was a student of Viola Farber in
France in the 1980s before she received a scholarship to study for a year in
New York City. “I was quite young at the time,” Monnier says during a phone
conversation from her headquarters in Montpellier. “I was only 24, but I was
fascinated by Merce and have been my whole life.”
Cunningham's following in France has been
particularly strong for decades: it may come as little surprise that his name
at birth was Mercier Philip
Cunningham. During our talk, Monnier discussed her relationship with him and
his teaching as well as the impact of his approach on her own career and his
reception in France.
Monnier's encounter with Cunningham technique
began in Lyon where she was trained by Michel Hallet Eghayan. She says the
Cunningham technique had been brought to France by dancers like “Eghayan, a French choreographer but not very well known, and Jean Claude
Gallotta who had met Merce in the 1970s and, when he returned to France,
brought the technique as well as a new way of thinking about dancing.”
When Viola Farber came to Angers to direct
the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, Monnier was among the artists who
auditioned for her project. “It was in 1981 or 1982,” Monnier recalls. “She was
looking for four French dancers, and I was chosen.” From there Monnier was
selected to receive a scholarship to study in New York for one year. It was in
New York that she began to choreograph.
“We were very influenced by Merce. It was
hard to find our own way,” Monnier recalls. So how to distance her work from
the master's? “My way was to do the exact opposite: to use music and do
narrative,” she says with a laugh. In New York at this time, she was working
with Jean-Francois Duroure who had also trained with Viola Farber in Angers.
Together they created “Cru.”
“We prepared a duet with Kurt Weill music,
and performed it first in a loft somewhere in the city. But it was a big
success, toured in France. We went to India. Six years of performances…”
In a review from The New York Times in 1987, following a performance of duets
created after “Cru,” Anna Kisselgoff writes:
"Mathilde
Monnier and Jean-Francois Duroure are more than worth a look. In the best
sense, they are disturbing performers. She looks and moves like one of the
mannish women in Jean Cocteau's films. At the same time her innate glamour is
totally feminine. He darts through space with the look of a frightened rabbit.
The intelligence in his face suggests acting of great depth. It is no accident
that the two works on view – ‘Pudique Acide' and ‘Extasis' – leave us with the
powerful image of Mr. Duroure as the alienated man…. The duets offer a surface
theme of male-female relations but are really about movement quality. Each
dancer fits into the other's body configuration with ease and total knowledge.
As they slide and roll off each other, they take the technique of contact
improvisation into an unsuspected theatrical realm …
The
movement does act as a metaphor for the relationships implied. ‘Pudique Acide'
has both dancers in plaid skirts over pedal-pushers and wearing black sweaters.
The male and female in each of us is also implied in the emphasis on unison
dancing. The silent beginning is followed by the sound of several Kurt Weill
songs, mainly from ‘The Threepenny Opera,' sung in the original German …"
The influence of Cunningham on Monnier
would be hard to detect from reading such a review, but Monnier was not alone
in seeking her own path away from Cunningham. For Viola Farber, as Monnier
recalls, this was a vivid concern: “Viola's technique is very different from
Merce's and she wanted to separate her work from Merce's as well. She talked a
lot about that. Her technique is coming from Cecchetti as well as from Merce.
Even physically, what is interesting with Viola, is that she had most of the
Cunningham technique from the beginning of his company. This is completely
different from what became of his company and his technique between the 1970s
and 80s. Then, in the beginning, it was more animal, more organic and less
about geometry. It was more individual. Cunningham's technique was influenced a
lot by Carolyn Brown and Viola Farber. They were used as interpreters.”
Monnier's theory is visible in films like “Cage/Cunningham” by Elliot Caplan which includes footage of Cunningham in a
black and white film performing a solo of twitches and impulsive movements,
more creature than human-dancer. Even the films of Carolyn Brown and Viola
Farber, especially when viewed alongside today's Cunningham company, reveal
differences in the stream-lining and more homogenous look of the current
dancers.
Asked what a typical day was like during
her year in New York City, Monnier responds “the morning began with class at
10:00 a.m., like a mass … You never knew who was teaching, which was one of the
principles of the school. Once you were there, you could not leave.”
Monnier admits she preferred some teachers
(Meg Harper, Suzanna Hayman Chaffey, Chris Komar) more than others (Ann
Papoulis). “I had many classes with Merce. We were all waiting to see which day
he would teach. And it was at this time, in the 1980s, that Merce began to have
teachers who had not been in the company. This was strange. I understand that
the company dancers were really busy, but more former dancers and people who
hadn't been in the company for a while were teaching. It was hard. I know that
the company dancers were tired: the rehearsals were not too long, 3 or 4 hours,
but physically it was very hard work.”
Asked if she watched his rehearsals,
Monnier replies: “Merce was very closed and people did not watch. Afterwards,
when he visited Montpellier, we had talks and we would have dinner. He
considers me as a choreographer now. He was really interested in the African
piece, Pour Antigone, created in
1993.”
When Monnier approached Cunningham about
creating Signé,Signés, a diptych based on the work of
Merce Cunningham and John Cage, he was “always very open … he liked the idea and he said ‘I trust you.' He knows very quickly
who is who and has good intuition.”
In 2001, Monnier premiered Signé,Signés, and she is quick to point out “it was not an homage. It was an
exercise to him, towards him. I had pictures from Merce and the idea to use
live birds from the very beginning.” The work was commissioned by Vienna's
ImPulsTanz festival and the birds were inspired by drawings by Cunningham of
the winged creatures. (In Caplan’s film “Cage/Cunningham” he is seen making such
drawings.)
Monnier notes an interesting dialectic in
Cunningham's play between the natural and the “superficial.” She says that
often the titles of his works allude to nature: “RainForest,” “Beach Birds,”
“Ocean,” but the dancers and the movement are displays of the "technological,
composed body.”
For her own body, the Cunningham technique
was an ideal training. “I think I was always influenced by Merce. Not in an
obvious way but very underground. I did not use the technique because I know
the technique and I was very good in the technique. It was the best for my
body, and very good for people who start late. You have to use your head: if
your hips are not flexible, the technique will give you a tool to find another
solution. The technique is incredible because your give your body ways to
adapt. At this time, a lot of dancers who came to the company did not have so
much training. Maybe three or four years. Not like now.”
Again noticing changes in the Cunningham
technique over the years, Monnier describes how much of the company today has
had ballet training, unlike the performers in prior years. She also notices
that the changes in the company are frequent: “I haven't seen the company for
three or four years now. When there is a pause like this, suddenly ‘Pooff!' it's
a completely different company. Unlike directors like Pina Bausch who basically
takes the same people over and over, with Merce it is funny how much the
dancers change. I wonder if he does that so that we become attached to the work
rather than the people. Of course he likes the people and he has a nice
connection with the dancers, but at the same time he doesn't care [so much
about their longevity] and this has always been very strange to me. The company
is constantly transformed. I will see a performance and love the company and
two years later say I don't like it anymore. Then, two years later … I have
always been shocked and surprised. I see the company in a new way. And this is
the only company with whom I have this relationship.”
Does Monnier have particular favorite
pieces in the repertory? “I like Pictures (1984), Beach Birds (1991), Biped
(1999) and some from the 1960s: Crises (1960), Winterbranch (1964)."
In 2009, she will present a three-month
festival dedicated to Merce Cunningham: “There will be films, Charles Atlas
will come, the basis of the program is Cunningham and his relation with the
Picture. I want to work on pieces with the students and will bring teachers in.
Louise Burns has taught here at Montpellier and loves to teach here. She will
do some of the events. I think it is important that the young generation has a
chance to know the work and to see what is useful for us as contemporary
artists. I believe the way Merce uses the camera and lets filmmakers use the
camera around his work has influenced his work and all the he has done with
‘Lifeforms’.”
Having been intimately involved with the
Cunningham technique and having watched the evolution of his company, Monnier
says she is concerned that the movements were “quicker, more interesting,
informal” in previous generations of artists, and that “sometimes something is
lost. It used to be very technical, virtuoso, but also wild. When you see Merce
perform, he is like this. He is like an animal, more funny and warm when he
dances. You can see he is joking … Then the dancers are serious like ‘we have a
task.' It is as if he doesn't let them be freer. The technique is so difficult
that you have to be young and devoted and your memory is completely full. After
that what can you do? I think this change become more apparent in the 1990s. As
Merce gets older, and it has been a long career, slowly he has a new
relationship with his company. After Karole Armitage, after Chris Komar …”
But the French in particular have been fond
of Cunningham repertory for four decades. Monnier attributes this not only to
the practical reasons – he has a great patron and supporter in Benedicte Pesle – but also to the personal rapport between his aesthetic and the culture of
France. “I think the French are really mental. We are not so emotional like you
[Americans]. We are strange people. The abstraction in Cunningham, it is very
Cartesian, very French in its philosophy. It works in France. I think also this
network Benedicte built for him between Montpellier, Paris, Avignon … he was
invited to places and his following in France grew. For me, I fight with this.
I like the abstraction and we also have this tradition of abstraction in our
painting, and my work is very abstract. I do not like a lot of décor. I am more
attracted by something abstract than something narrative. Part of my background
was working with Pina Bausch, so my background was really between these worlds.
I am attracted by abstraction and pulled by the fiction.”
But the similarities between the two artists
seep into more than their creations: Monnier, like Cunningham is a performer,
creator and director of a school. She has also paid close attention to working
with film and has made four
films: Chinoiseries and Bruit blanc by Valérie Urréa, E pour
eux by Karim Zeriahen, and in 2004, Claire Denis
directed Vers Mathilde.
Her
school at Montpellier is internationally respected as a center that nurtures
experimentation and innovation. The description of the choreographic center at
Montpellier, called ex.e.r.ce, says its curriculum “invents and distinguishes itself by relying most importantly on the artists
and personalities who create it. It is thought as a combination of means, tools
and spaces put at the students’ disposal.”
Black Mountain College, founded in 1933,
was similarly constructed: designed in reaction to the more traditional
education of the time, Black Mountain created an environment conducive to the
interdisciplinary work that revolutionized the arts and sciences. It is fitting
that this is where Cunningham established his company in the summer of 1953.
The faculty of Black Mountain included
Cunningham, Cage, Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem de Kooning, Alfred
Kazin, and Paul Goodman. Students found themselves at the locus of such wide
ranging innovations as Buckminster
Fuller's Geodesic Dome, Charles Olson's Projective Verse, and some
of the first performance art events in the United States. By the late 1940s,
Black Mountain had become the ideal of American experimental education. Cage
would later (in 1961) say about the word “experimental”: “It is apt, providing it is
understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success
or failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown.”
Monnier has similarly inspired experiment
and innovation, not only through her research center and training program, but
also in her own performing and creating. Asked if she ever considered these parallels
between her career and Merce's, she paused and said simply: “I had not thought
of it that way.”
(Dec. 9, 2008)
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