I loved it. To me this is what dance should be. Long Time No See was light and effortless, and Newark had all that wonderful, counter intuitive work with the floor. I also like the fact that her dances are clearly made without any relationship to the music. They can be viewed without music all together. Pure dance.

Excellent. Prior to this performance I would have said I preferred Mendelssohn’s 1st oratorio Paulus but now I’m converted. This is a more mature work. A definite wow.

I came for the Berio and wasn’t disappointed. The Bach was sensitively played. None of the dry mechanical playing that plagues so many Bach performance (it’s music not an algorithm). I took me awhile to get my bearings in the Harbison, but I enjoyed it and think it would be good to hear again.

While I could spend paragraphs discussing why this embarrassing performance was incompetent, ignorant, and juvenile, and how appalled I am that you would allow this on the same stage where Cunningham, Taylor and Sankai Juku onced performed, let me just bluntly state that if Koh’s Berio, AASO’s Elijah, and Trisha Brown do not make up for all the tedious, pretentious, idiocy I’ve seen on your stages in recent years, I won’t be wasting any more time or money on USM.

I agree the standing ovation happens so often now it has lost all meaning.

I did not intend to comment, but since you are looking for a real description let me be the one honest person on this board.

If like most people you know this work from the music (some of the best of Glass, only surpassed by the first and last scenes of Satyagraha)you will have no idea of what happens on stage.

Contrary to what others will tell you this is not non-narrative, not non-linear, not open-ended, not abstract, not meditative, not contemplative, not a piece that present various aspects of Einstein/relativity/the modern condition that is open to varied interpretations by the viewer, and not one that will give you any “epiphany”. It is, as the texts by Mr. Knowles, autistic theater. The images, the words, the numbers, the repetitive gestures, are not open but rigidly connected autistically. The meaning is therefore not open, but closed and opaque to the viewer.

The dance is neither the best nor worst of modern dance, but it is plunked into the play to serve the purpose of providing something to watch while the real point of the scene takes place. That point in the 1st dance is for a light fixture to slowly move across the stage from left to right. In the 2nd dance a larger light fixture moves slowly across the stage from right to left. Thus the need for the distraction of the dance.

So, if you like the music stay home and listen to it because any thoughts about Einstein in your mind while listening will be at least as interesting as what happens on stage.

If however the idea of being moderately bored for 4.5 hours and leaving feeling merely tired is worth being able to say you saw it then I guess think about giving a try.

(for a relative measure of what “moderately bored” means to me, my favorite composer is Morton Feldman for the “late works”.

Random & repetitive? Repetition in dance, as in music, is the structure of the composition. Dance is theme and variation just like music. It doesn’t matter if it is “modern” dance or “classical” ballet, theme and variation.

I agree with the last post, WOW. The choreography, the sets, the costumes, the music, the lighting, it all went together perfectly. We witnessed a masterpiece. Bring theses people back.

P.S. You have brought us great modern dance from Japan and now Taiwan, must be some great modern dance in South Korea, too. Probably worth investigasting.

1st thanks for the grea dance this year: Sankai Juku, Grupo Corpo, & Cunningham.

But I have a question. I really like Cunningham’s choreography, but why does he so often choose music that is irritating. I understand that the dance is created independently from the music, and the only thing they have in common is amount of time they take. But often, the music is a distraction from the structure, the patterns, the rhythms of the complex dance you are trying to follow.

Is this something to blame on Cage? Or is there an aesthetic reason for choosing music that hinders your ability to concentrate on the dance? I think these dances would be more beautiful with the sound off.