At a Quarry, The Tidal Pull of Merce's 'Ocean'

WAITE PARK, Minn. -- They call it "Merce on the Rocks." It's not a cocktail but a restaging of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham's "Ocean"-- 14 dancers, 150 musicians and 1,200 spectators -- at the bottom of a rock quarry.

"Ocean," conceived with composer John Cage, made its debut in 1994 at the Cirque Royal in Brussels. The New York premiere followed two years later in a giant tent. Since then, "Ocean" has been performed in its entirety only eight times, and five of those were overseas. The Minnesota production, a tribute to Cunningham as he nears 90, is what he calls "the biggest, most complex version we have ever done."

An honest invitation to one of the three sold-out performances here this week could have gone like this: "Hey, want to go out to the quarry this weekend? A lot of people in lilac spandex are going to dance to an orchestra's rendering of singing whales, crashing icebergs and barking seals. And it goes on for 90 minutes! With no intermission!"

Does it sound interminable? Or fascinating?

For 3,600 people over three nights, most of them from the Twin Cities, the answer is the latter. They are willing to pay $50 and drive 180 miles round trip to watch modern dance in 50-some-degree temperatures, exhibiting the kind of fortitude you expect from Minnesotans when the Golden Gophers play the Wisconsin Badgers.

In fact, Thursday evening's opening got underway much like an athletic event. Cars pulled off a street dotted with strip malls and crossed the fields at River's Edge Park just outside St. Cloud, where patrons boarded dozens of school buses headed for the quarry. A chipper usher, a student at the College of St. Benedict, took the microphone and reminded passengers on my bus not to climb the rock formations.

And then came the awe-inducing moment when we descended into Rainbow Quarry, 150 feet below sea level. Like divers catching their first glimpse of a coral reef, we gaped at a million-dollar spectacle at the bottom of the pit.

A blue tarpaulin covered the dance floor, a giant metal edifice that looked like a music festival stage. Risers fanned out on all four sides, with a platform atop each for musicians. Less picturesque, but still impressive, were the 25 portable potties, the ambulance and the concessions tents selling tiramisu and coffee. Bus passengers disembarked and picked up their souvenir "Merce on the Rocks" seat cushions, sure to be available on eBay next week. Seating was general, so the merely curious found themselves next to wealthy donors. The woman on my right chose her seat not for its prime view of the stage but because it faced her favorite wall of rock.

The notion of performing "Ocean" down here began two years ago, when Cunningham's company was in residence at St. Benedict, and the dancers went off on a tour of "granite country." About the same time, the Walker Art Center was considering a revival of "Ocean," and its performing arts curator, Philip Bither, said he wanted "a space that is as monumental as the work itself." The dancers helped decide that Rainbow Quarry would be the space.

The Walker took the lead in fundraising, securing $100,000 grants from philanthropists Sage and John Cowles and the National Endowment for the Arts. From there, the list of partners extends from Martin Marietta Materials -- owners of the working quarry -- to the Waite Park Fire Department.

As a dance work, "Ocean" is a great equalizer. It is choreographed in the round, so the view from any angle makes you forget that most dances are meant for a proscenium stage. Dancers enter from wings at the four corners, cued not by the music but by four digital clocks hanging on posts.

The music begins when the clocks reset at 0:00. The score sounds not like an overture but an orchestra tuning up. It is "chance music," a score roughed out by Cage and completed after his death by Andrew Culver. The musicians are given notes to play but no guidance as to rhythm or meter. In other words, it doesn't matter terribly whether it's played by the St. Cloud Symphony and a bunch of college students, as it is here, or the New York Philharmonic. It still sounds kind of horrible, at first.

When the dancers run onstage, you can almost see them counting beats in their heads. Tonight, no drums will do the job for them.

Cunningham divides the choreography into 19 sections that audiences are unlikely to notice. Much more obvious is the contrast between the movement and music, as the dancers steadily transition from position to position. These dancers are uncommonly strong, always balancing on one foot or the other, and maintaining each pose for equal lengths of time.

The nautical noises -- an electronic soundtrack by David Tudor -- cue up about six minutes into the work. Conveniently for critics, or observers with notebooks in hand, highlights from "Ocean" can be recapped in "SportsCenter" fashion. At 44 minutes, there's a pas de deux with rapid dégagés that stand out for being small and perfect in the midst of a large-scale work. At 55 minutes, five couples pull off a series of intricate lifts. The women have put on gauzy shifts over their unitards by this point, and a breeze has picked up in the quarry. Yet somehow these movements are more stark than striking. The dancers maintain stoic stares, eyes full of purpose without a hint of emotion.

"Ocean" allows viewers to find meaning less in the movement than in the experience -- in this case, the quarry. On this moonless Minnesota evening, the rock walls vanish as soon as the sun sets, and an element of cynicism sets in: Why did we come all this way for a dance in the dark? But when the clocks hit 1:22, the walls are suddenly illuminated, and the dancers all return to the stage in indigo to hold their final positions. One by one they exit, the clocks strike 1:30, and "Ocean" is over. Ovations follow, and it is easy to miss the chair being wheeled in below the stage.

There is Merce Cunningham, the source of this spectacle, quietly smiling.