Ocean.

REVIEWED BY LYNN GARAFOLA

It was nearly 9:30 P.M. A few brave souls scurried across the plaza, coated against the unseasonal chill. Inside Damrosch Park. bleachers ringed the stage like a medieval wall. Above, on a walkway, were the I 12 musicians of the Essential Music Orchestra; below, under Marsha Skinner's huge, luminous disk, monitors ticked away the seconds until curtain. So began the New York premiere of Ocean, Merce Cunningham's last collaboration with John Cage.

Inspired by the writings of James Joyce, Ocean is a work of spiritual elation and refined eroticism, incipient narratives, historical echoes, and glowing classical beauty. Like Finnegans Wake, the piece is full of connections--emotional, temporal, spiritual. Most of all, Ocean is a great summing-up, a vision of sensuous classicism that pays tribute to Cage while rejecting the extremes of his astringent experimentalism. [For more about the genesis of the work, see Reviews/International, October 1994, page 82.]

Line, always important to Cunningham, is a key to this platonic vision and the source of its richest images. I am thinking, for instance, of the tabletop arabesque arrested at the very still point of its ideal form, or the slowly lengthening arabesque penchee that reveals both the process of the movement and the purity of its climactic picture.

There are many duets in Ocean, as in other Cunningham dances. What is new in this work is the sense of emotional connection between the partners, the overt--for Cunningham, at least--expression of tenderness and eroticism. In one of the duets, the man slips under one of the woman's legs and nestles it against his chest. They perform mirrored extensions; in a rush of chivalric feeling, he bows over her hand as if to kiss it. In another duet, the woman, spun up and over by her partner, plunges into a backbend, is hoisted aloft by a cortege of men, and borne offstage like a totem of erotic mystery.

This allusion to the ending of Balanchine's Serenade is one of many "memories" in Ocean's second half. Like ghosts, they shadow the choreography, hinting at presences in the manner of an artistic autobiography--a snippet of oldstyle Graham floorwork; a woman poised in the high releve of a Nijinsky nymph; gestures a la Delsarte; the sunburst image from Balanchine's Apollo. The debts that Cunningham acknowledges owe little to Cage.

Still, Cage's presence is palpable. Not only is the score (by Andrew Culver and the late David Tudor) based on his ideas, but it is also infused with his contemplative spirit. He himself seems to hover above the neighboring high-rises, coaxing the rapt, upturned faces of the dancers to his invisible abode. Bathed for most of the piece in Aaron Copp's soft purple light, they are his mourners and his spiritual heirs.

The Cunningham company is the finest ensemble performing today in this country. The technique of the women is prodigious. In their small, darting jumps you see the full foot at work, pushing off, stretching, and returning through the toes to plie--a textbook demonstration of what a jump should be. Their aplomb is unrivaled, allowing them to control the tilt and shape of an extension, however unorthodox it may be; to prolong an action until the movement is barely perceptible; and to produce the flawless double pirouettes that they perform barefoot.

Cunningham's quest for perfection is as uncompromising as his closely guarded independence and disregard for convention. Ninety minutes long, Ocean was performed without intermission while the audience sat on planks. No matter that Damrosch Park was full of people with aching backs: for Cunningham, discomfort is a necessary component of pleasure. So we donned our hair shirts and, as the trees rustled mysteriously in the night air, feasted, richly, on our reward.