the most realistic of all possible things...

"... now time can be an awful lot of bother with the ordinary pinch-penny counting that has to go on with it, but if one can think of the structure as a space of time in which anything can happen in any sequence of movement event, and any length of stillness can take place, then the counting is an aid towards freedom, rather than a discipline towards mechanization. a use of time structure also frees the music into space, making the connection between the dance and the music one of individual autonomy connected at structural points. the result is the dance is free to act as it chooses, as is the music. the music doesn't have to work itself to death to underline the dance, or the dance create havoc trying to be as flashy as the music.

for me, it seems enough that dancing is a spiritual exercise in physical form, and that what is seen, is what it is. and i do not believe it is possible to be "too simple". what the dancer does is the most realistic of all possible things, and to pretend a man standing on a hill could be doing everything except just standing is simply divorce - divorce from life, from the sun coming up and going down, from clouds in front of the sun, from the rain that comes from the clouds and sends you to the drugstore for a cup of coffee, from each thing that succeeds each thing. dancing is a visible action of life."

merce cunningham, space time and dance, in transformation 3, 1952