I’ve heard that in Suite by Chance (1953) Cunningham set phrase durations by chance and kept time with stopwatches — does anyone know if the watches were used onstage, or only in rehearsal? I’m digging into how that pragmatic timing shaped the felt arc of the movement, turning structure into an emotional current.
‘pragmatic timing shaped the felt arc’ — agree; in a 2014 remount I worked on we used stopwatches only in rehearsal, then switched to breath counts in performance so the durations held without the watch reading as a prop. Did you ever see any notes suggesting the watches were used onstage?
In a Suite by Chance (1953) restaging I assisted, we kept the “stopwatches” offstage and fed durations via a dimmed LED timer in the wing so dancers could hold counts without wearing anything onstage. If you try this, tape a bit of neutral gel over the display to prevent spill, and for background the Trust’s note is here: https://mercecunningham.org/works/suite-by-chance/.
Don’t think ‘stopwatches onstage’ ever happened for the 1953 suite — Merce hated visual clutter, and I don’t see them listed as props in the Trust’s Dance Capsules (https://dancecapsules.mercecunningham.org). I’ve done it with a silent vibra-timer tucked in a pocket so durations stay exact but the arc feels breathed; have you come across any cue sheets naming a timekeeper?
From what I’ve seen in remount notebooks, the seconds were tracked by stage management and lighting cues, not visible “stopwatches,” so dancers held durations by internal count plus subtle offstage markers. If you want to feel that arc, set the phrases to mm:ss in rehearsal, then trade the clock for breath counts with a single dim shift at each cut. Caveat: in very quiet houses the offstage cues can leak focus, so keep them low and consistent.
@larissa_modern’s point tracks with what I’ve seen: the clock lives offstage — SM with a quiet click or a dim cue light — so nothing visible, though I have seen a student remount hide a wristwatch in back. The arc comes from hitting durations, not counts — “land on the time, not the step” — so shifts read like weather fronts rather than phrases. If you want to feel it, run one phrase to a 37‑second timer in silence and then against Cage‑style time brackets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_bracket) and compare.