Dance On Ensemble: Making Dances (with works of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Tim Etchells in Mathilde Monnier)
Tuesday, 25 November at 7:00 p.m.
dance performances and discussion; introduction to works of M. Cunningham and M. Graham at 6:30 p.m.
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, Stage Under the Stars and Šentjakob Stage
6:30 p.m. Rok Vevar: Introduction to works of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, lecture, Stage Under the Stars – foyer
7:00 p.m. Dance On Ensemble & Merce Cunningham: Ljubljana Story – A Re-Imagining of Story (1963, 2025), dance performance, duration: 30 min, Stage Under the Stars
8:00 p.m. Martha Graham: Deep Song (1937) + Tim Etchells: Everything/Nothing (2021), dance performance, duration: 8 min, Šentjakob Stage
8:30 p.m. Mathilde Monnier: never ending (Story) (2021), dance performance, duration: 30 min, Stage Under the Stars
9:10 p.m. Discussion with Ty Boomershine, artistic director of Dance On Ensemble, Stage Under the Stars – foyer
At this year’s CoFestival, we are once again hosting the international Berlin-based Dance On Ensemble. This ensemble is a unique platform that allows top dancers to extend their careers beyond the typical age of retirement in dance cultural systems worldwide. Artistic director Ty Boomershine invited the renowned French choreographer Mathilde Monnier to create an artistic response to Merce Cunningham’s iconic open choreographic work, Story, from 1963. At the same time, British director, visual artist and performer Tim Etchells was tasked with creating his artistic response to Martha Graham’s 1937 solo, Deep Song. The resulting programme brings together two distinct works of American dance modernism with contemporary responses from two representatives of European contemporary performing arts. Each of them uses a variety of artistic media in their tasks. The local audience has never had the opportunity to see Martha Graham’s work live, although the film documentary A Dancer’s World was screened in Ljubljana in September 1962 during her Yugoslav tour, while all three other artists have previously presented their works to the Ljubljana audience.
Martha Graham: Deep Song (1937) + Tim Etchells: Everything/Nothing (2021)
The most famous American choreographer, Martha Graham, was never presented with her repertoire on Slovenian stages, neither during her lifetime nor after her death in 1991. Her solo, Deep Song, is the choreographer and dancer’s poignant response to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), embodying the modern dance aspirations of the American 1930s. Long-time Graham dancer and Dance On Ensemble member Miki Orihara will dance a restaging of Deep Song. Tim Etchells’ installation Everything/Nothing (2021) is presented alongside this. The work dialogically intervenes in the dance space, reflecting Graham’s own interest in the latest artistic and media directions of her time. This pairing offers a significant artistic and contextual reference to an era marked by war conflicts, much like our own.
Her solo Deep Song was created during a period when Graham’s choreographic work in the USA was elevating her to a popular icon of modern art. American art reacted to socio-political conditions in Europe, locally and globally. This was because of its anti-fascist stance and against a backdrop of a burgeoning labour movement and leftist political simmering. When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, dividing the world into fascist and anti-fascist camps, Martha Graham famously declined an invitation to perform at a dance festival commemorating the Olympic Games in Berlin. Her refusal was a clear political statement, compelling her to artistically respond to the escalating global situation. Her group choreographic work Chronicle (1936) and the solo Deep Song (1937) are direct artistic responses to the menacing political climate and the immense human suffering inflicted upon the victims of the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the 1930s, Graham created several influential dance solos, with Lamentation (1930) and Frontier (1935) remaining the most renowned today. Concurrently, she developed a distinctive dance technique that, through its engagement with the muscular and skeletal systems, functioned as a movement form of engaged social realism. In the era of industrialisation and manual labour, this technique powerfully demonstrated the strength of the human body, amplifying the effect of physical exertion and weight. Her dance was clearly inspired by American modern sculpture, as these were also the years she began collaborations with prominent modernist sculptors like Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi.
Tim Etchells’ installation, in a neon-textual form, incorporates Federico García Lorca’s 1931 poem Ay!. In it, the poet, a victim of the Spanish Civil War, wrote: “Everything in the world is broken. Nothing but silence remains.”
Dance On Ensemble & Merce Cunningham: Ljubljana Story – A Re-Imagining of Story (1963, 2025) and Mathilde Monnier: never ending (Story) (2021)
The Dance On Ensemble re-imaginines Story (1963) due to its incomplete documentary traces. Alongside Field Dances (1963), Story was among Merce Cunningham’s most open works. Created almost exactly on the ten-year anniversary of his ensemble, it was a staple of the six-month world tour in 1964, after which the choreographer achieved global renown. This work originates from a pivotal time when Merce Cunningham and John Cage were fundamentally altering the conditions and methods of dance creativity in New York. They initiated compositional principles that young artists of that era termed postmodern dance. The Dance On Ensemble approached Story with a clear academic foundation, basing their decisions and materials on available documentation and insights from experts on Cunningham’s oeuvre. In never ending (Story), French choreographer Mathilde Monnier draws on the poetry of American neo-avant-garde poet David Antin (a contemporary of Cunningham) to craft a “story” that serves as the foundation for a dance performance. Dancers respond to this “story” on stage with their dance instruments and imagination. This approach emphasises that movement and speech are both fundamentally rooted in the body.
Story is a title that uniquely subverts convention, since its dance content is not narrative. At a time when dance was transitioning between narrative and more problematic forms, Cunningham clearly sought to affirm alternative approaches to choreographic structures. The work was originally composed of eighteen predetermined choreographic sequences: solos, duets, trios and group configurations. These were made available to dancers for immediate composition through variations in entrances and exits, spatial arrangements, direction, tempo, the connectivity of movement materials within each sequence, and even the quality of dance phrases, as Carolyn Brown explains in her book Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (2007). The musical score, Sapporo by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, was similarly open. Visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, serving as lighting designer, set designer, and the ensemble’s technician, could assemble stage elements from anything found backstage in the theatres where the ensemble performed Story. “When we came to Europe, we were shocked by how tidy all the theatres were. There was hardly anything that could be used for set design,” Rauschenberg recalled years later. Both Story and Field Dances mirrored the structural principles of Events (the first Event was performed in Vienna in June 1964), which Cunningham’s ensemble performed outside conventional theatres in its early days, and which were composed of repertoire sequences. One such Event was hosted in Ljubljana at Cankarjev dom in December 1995, marking Cunningham’s ensemble’s first and last performance in the city.
Martha Graham: Deep Song (1937) + Tim Etchells: Everything/Nothing (2021)
Choreography and costume: Martha Graham
Restaging, cast: Miki Orihara
Neon installation: Tim Etchells
Music: Henry Cowell
Lighting design reconstruction: David Finley
Light: Martin Beeretz
Sound: Mattef Kuhlmey
Production: Dance On/Bureau Ritter.
This production of Deep Song is presented by arrangement through Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc.
Dance On Ensemble & Merce Cunningham: Ljubljana Story – A Re-Imagining of Story (1963, 2025)
Choreography: Merce Cunningham
Based on the original choreographic work Story by Merce Cunningham 1963.
Additional choreographic directions and material developed by the Dance On Ensemble under the direction of Daniel Squire. An indeterminate work reconfigured for each show using both chance operations and in-performance decision making.
Composer: Toshi Ichiyanagi
Set, costumes, lighting after the concepts of Robert Rauschenberg
Cast: Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Miki Orihara, Tim Persent, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta
Live-music and sound: Mattef Kuhlmey
Artist: Meta Grgurevič
Stager: Daniel Squire
Light: Patrick Lauckner/Falk Dittrich
Light on tour: Martin Beeretz
Costume: Sophia Piepenbrock-Saitz
Assistant to the director: Clarissa Omiecienski
Production: Dance On/Bureau Ritter. Under licence of the Merce Cunningham Trust.
Mathilde Monnier: never ending (Story) (2021)
Choreography: Mathilde Monnier
Cast: Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta
Lighting design: Martin Beeretz
Sound design: Mattef Kuhlmey
Artistic collaboration: Stéphane Bouquet
Costume: Mathilde Monnier
Costume assistance: Nora Stocker
Technical direction: Martin Beeretz
Production: Dance On/Bureau Ritter
In cooperation with: Kammerspiele München
With the support of: Montpellier Danse à l’Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse
Production director: Valentina Boroni, Hélène Philippot
Coordinator productions and participation: Anastasia Luck
International distribution: Fauves – agency for the performing arts
* Discussion with Ty Boomershine will be held in English.
Organised by: Kino Šiška and NDA Slovenia in collaboration with Ljubljana Puppet Theatre
Supported by:
Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union as part of DANCE ON, PASS ON, DREAM ON.
DANCE ON is a project by Bureau Ritter gUG, funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Cover photo: Mathilde Monnier, never ending (Story). Photo: Jubal Battisti