“He’s one of the most influential choreographers the world has known,” declares Alla Kovgan about dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, the subject of Kovgan’s new documentary “Cunningham.” The film features recreations of many of Cunningham’s most famous dances filmed in 3-D in specially chosen locations in New York and Europe.
Kovgan was inspired to incorporate 3-D with dance after seeing Wim Wenders‘ Oscar-nominated documentary “Pina” about the life of choreographer of Pina Bausch. “When I watched it,” Kovgan remembers, “I really felt that there was some other possibility here with 3D and dance that hasn’t been realized.” The director wanted to do more than create a retrospective of Cunningham’s work. “The idea was not to necessarily capture his dances,” Kovgan explains. “The idea was really to translate his ideas into cinema with a capital C.”
Kovgan spent seven years trying to get her film made, but she wanted to go beyond merely filming the dances on traditional stages. Instead, the dances were filmed over the course of eighteen whirlwind days in a variety of indoor and outdoor locations in Germany, France, and New York City. Kovgan chose each location– which include rooftops, forests and even along highways– to match ideas communicated through each dance. “When you start thinking about dance in cinematic terms, the stages go away and you get spaces in places,” she says.
Source: Alla Kovgan (‘Cunningham’ director) on Merce Cunningham Documentary – GoldDerby