AS THE MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY PERFORMS FOR THE LAST TIME IN PARIS, FORMER COMPANY MEMBER CEDRIC ANDRIEUX PERFORMS HIS RETROSPECTIVE ONE MAN SHOW
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| CEDRIC ANDRIEUX IN HIS DRESSING ROOM |
Cédric Andrieux joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1999 ( after first dancing with Jennifer Muller). He left in July, 2007 to join the Lyon Opera Ballet.
On June 20th of that year, on the most beautiful late spring day, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company was on a bus returning to the city after the outdoor dress rehearsal for a Cunningham Event at Philip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut.
The long day had been a true fête champêtre, with the dancers sunning on a hill after lunch, and then resuming the long pair of stages connected by a walkway, with the woodland opening behind them like a day dream. On stage, they seemed to have come out of the forest. Just as, In Cunningham's Ocean, they seemed to come out of the sea. 
IN EITHER ELEMENT, Andrieux could take dominion. He could be Poseidon, he could be Orlando in the Forest of Arden. Just in doing the steps and making them as big as they could be, he could summon up a world. This is the Cunningham magic, and Andrieux was an adept.
"Ive been in New York for 10 years," he said at the time, "dancing Merce's work for nine years. I didn't think there's anyone else in this city who could bring me to as may levels as Merce did. But I want to dance different characters--which is why I chose Lyon. Because what I need in my career is diversity."
"I'm glad to be going back."
"It comes with a sense of apprehension a little bit, because I haven't lived my adult life there. It is mostly a lifestyle choice. I feel at a place where I've done the pieces I wanted to do, and I've done them enough."
"I leave with no regrets, and I feel very fortunate about the experiences I've had in this company. I feel very at peace, and that's great. I feel very lucky that I got to dance for Merce Cunningham. On top of the experience, he opened so many doors for me."
"At the end of the day, it gave me freedom to explore different ways of approaching movement."
Andrieux was looking forward to dancing a wide repertory in Lyon, including works by Trisha Brown, Maguey Marin, William Forsythe, and Jérôme Bel. He was moving into an old apartment building with a balcony, a five minute walk from the opera house, and an eight minute walk from "an amazing outdoor market."
Later that spring, Merce Cunningham --named by the French first a Chevalier and then an Officier of the the Légion d'Honneur--would say, "From childhood I always wanted to see France. Not just Paris but the North, South, East, and West of France." And there Andrieux would return.
One of Cédric's favorite roles was Merce's own in "Suite for Five."
">He performs a section of it--as if quoting his own earlier performance-- in this "visual autobiography" conceived and directed by Bel, telling the story of his dancing life from his first training in France though his last three years in Lyon.
This is the fifth in a series of pieces Bel describes as "questioning the experience and the knowledge of performers." (The first, about a member of the corps de ballet of the Paris Opera, was shown here in its film version at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.)
The winter after Cunningham's death, on a memorial program at the Théâtre de la Ville, Andrieux performed the Cunningham section of his piece.
Standing alone on the unadorned stage in his practice clothes, Andrieux spoke quietly into a microphone fastened somewhere on his shirt. [There he spoke French; performing in the United States, he spoke in his very New Yorkais English.)
'Je m'appelle Cédric Andrieux, " he began.
He was still, modest, plain, and in fact the exact opposite to what he had been with Cunningham: a master of projection.
His intensity, his gaze, his ability to appear large in any context--these were some of his qualities dancing with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He was focused, he was ardent, he was there.
And he was completely, compellingly present in this piece too, but not by sending himself out into the house.
Instead, he drew his audience in. Somehow, he had reversed his polarity.
In the course of the work, he performs what feel like sketches, very clear, of two of his Cunningham roles--the "Suite" part he loved, and a solo from "Biped." Without music, without decor, just the steps.
I hadn't thought I'd see Cedric in this work again, but there he was, drawing it out of his memory of that dancing, and so it seemed, out of mine.
That's a kind of magic, too, an Andrieux magic.
Even if you don't know this work he's danced in before, you can know it now, though the medium of this event, and it will stand for itself, as itself.
Il est Cédric Andrieux.
photos: dressing room, Jamie Roque de la Cruz; Cédric Andrieux and Andrea Weber in "Ocean," Stephanie Berger; performance, Herman Sorgelos
©copyright Nancy Dalva 2010
originally published in danceviewtimes.com
