Cage/Cunningham
At the Baryshnikov Arts Center last night, two separate works by life-long collaborators and real-life partners John Cage and Merce Cunningham were brought together in magical combination. Cage's Four Walls (1944) was played by Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov with great dynamism and coherence, with Joélle Harvey singing the soprano part. Cunningham's Doubletoss (1993), in which a double roll of the dice determined the order of the movement sequences, was restaged by his assistant and dancer Robert Swinston. Besides displaying Cunningham's use of chance as a choreographic principle, last night's Doubletoss Interludes also exemplified another of his ideas: the independence of music and dance. One might not take one's eyes off the dancers but one's ears were hearing music with a pulsating life of its own. Though duets, trios and quartets formed throughout the dance, each of the eight dancers performed like a soloist, as accentuated by their differently-colored...