Oeuvre: Summerspace

The NYCB dancers are very at-home in this idiom, and they threw themselves wholeheartedly into this ballet. It was never less than watchable, but the music cried out for more avante-garde choreography than Peck provided.

Judging by the enthusiastic audience reactions to this program one might have to rethink the modern/ballet divide. Maybe there’s only two types of dance – good dance and bad dance. 

Despite the uneven performances, the evening offered a painful reminder: the future of Cunningham's opus is fragile and delicate. With his own company disbanded, his future is in the hands of dancers who are not trained in his technique and did not have the good fortune of working directly with the great choreographer.