Cunningham (dir: Alla Kovgan)

A career retrospective of the American dancer and choreographer, Merce Cunningham, consisting of both archival footage of him and his company, remounts using currently working dancers and the writings of Cunningham, John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. 

It’s an effective documentary, which gives a good sense of his character and views on dance. There are excerpts from dances created between 1942 and 1972. 

The film was shot in 3-D (in the introduction before the screening, Kovgan commented that she felt that 3-D and dance were natural partners). While some sequences benefit from the technology, there is a tendency for it to make the dancers seem a bit unreal, more like digital avatars than living and breathing performers. By comparison, “Pina” by Wim Wenders took a similar approach with the work of Pina Bausch but was much more successful at marrying the two. Still worth checking out though.