Giving Performers the Nod.

RECENTLY I ATTENDED a concert--the sixth performance I had gone to within a week--that wasn't dance, but flute, an instrument for which I have no great fondness. Part of a contemporary music series, this particular event was given over to works by a single composer, who was present. It was held in a small auditorium and the flautist had a good view of the audience, and vice versa. Several members of the audience in my immediate vicinity took the opportunity to sleep--a deep, rumbling, topple-over-sideways, drop-on-your-neighbor's-shoulder, comatose sleep. The flautist must have seen it all, but she kept right on playing. I couldn't help wondering how she felt, up there on the stage. How would you feel?

Why is sleeping in performance such an unsettling topic? Perhaps we think it sends a message to other members of the audience about our manners and tolerance and intelligence that we don't want to send. What performer in his right mind would admit he had put his audience to sleep? If the audience's behavior were something equally rude--like whistling the tunes or talking into cell phones or trying to read a newspaper with a flashlight--we would find grounds to object. So why do we still prefer to cover up this activity, apologize for the offenders, look away, cover our eyes, squirm with embarrassment and pray that the performers can't see us from the stage?

There are numerous reasons. One, sometimes we can't be really, really sure that somebody in the audience is asleep, especially if the sleepers have practiced faking wakefulness at performances for many years. New York dance, music and theater critics have developed this I'm-not-asleep posture into an art form in itself. Two, the sleeping patron may be somebody the management doesn't want to offend by waking up, like an arts patron with big bucks or a board member with particularly good connections. Three, we've all been there before, asleep in our seats, and we have learned not to throw the first stone. Fourth, if it's the flu season--say, February in the Northeast--the tablets and fizzy concoctions we put in our bodies may dull our best intentions to stay awake. Fifth, performers may realize that a docile, sleeping audience is probably better than an audience that turns vicious and hurls vegetables.

That heavy meal, the high-carb drinks, the ten-hour workday, the comfortable seats, the soporific contrast between the outdoors and the indoors, the stifling heat in the theater (dancers require warmth)--all contribute to the universal temptation to let the lids dip closed. And fact is, face it, sometimes the performance on stage is just plain tiresome and sleep is one of the kindest resolutions for everybody, like euthanasia. I've never seen the reverse, performers falling asleep while onstage, although perhaps we've all been to those deadly evenings when we suspect that this may have happened.

If an audience is not involved with what is taking place in performance, you've set the stage for sleep. All of us have succumbed to the temptation to sleep, I guess, but not being able to get some merciful shut-eye can also present problems. If you find yourself unable to drop off--say, for example, that the performance keeps interfering with your attempts to sleep--there are things you can do, given today's technology. Start with cell phones. Guessing by the number of them that start clattering during performances in New York, I assume that quite a bit of business must be getting done somewhere. For that matter, you could sing, but this is more likely to happen at the opera over at the Met than it is when the Cunningham company is performing to John Cage at City Center.

This segues naturally into comments on Merce Cunningham's fall New York weeklong series of Events at the Joyce Theater. These ninety-minute intermissionless dances consisted of bits and pieces from older Merce works joined together in random fashion to musical scores composed separately from the dances and presented with sets and costumes that reportedly had nothing to do with either. For Merce, these random combinations of theatrical elements reflect a perilous, if sometimes mesmerizingly beautiful human condition. The Cunningham dance technique performed by the current crop of articulate dancers is fascinating in itself, but I look for connections, and the Events programs challenged that expectation. In fact, in these Events, some of the best dancers, particularly the dedicated Robert Swinston, are eclipsed by Merce's random couplings.

Luckily, there are those performances that prevent an audience from losing its course, disengaging and going to sleep. For example: the recent revival on Broadway by Circle in the Square of The Rocky Horror Show, replete with '70s retro-choreography and a hint of sweet, vulgar innocence, all at top volume--a period musical that has become a cult classic. Can this be fairly compared with Merce? We're talking about sleep. The eagerly engaged, highly wired audience was noisy and hyperactive, the sort of thing that sometimes happens when children are given too much sugar. They participated vigorously by shouting out the dialogue, chanting responses, waving little flashlights (available for $10 each in the lobby, along with the cerise leis), and throwing gobs of pink confetti. It would have been impossible to sleep through that, had you even considered going there.

Another lively but more traditional challenge to sleep was the David Parsons company in New York's New Victory series. It was an hour-long morning show that offered a premiere and a serious taste of company favorites, all articulately hosted by the associate artistic director, Jamie Martinez. In addition to the dance, another reason you couldn't sleep that morning had to do with the audience: youngsters out on a school trip, who shrieked and screamed and seemed, judging by their very on-the-spot responses, to have a really good time. The brutally direct communications engendered by youthful, student audiences tend to endear them to dancers anyway. You can't fool kids. And don't ever try. There were no intermissions, everybody was awake, and none of the liquor bars in the back of the theater were open for business. It was, in its stimulating way, great good dance--the reason most of us go to live performances in the first place.