"Percussion music is revolution," declared John Cage, the visionary composer and proto-DJ who was also choreographer Merce Cunningham's longtime companion and collaborator, in an essay about modern dance. "Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom."
Well, it's tomorrow, and to Radiohead, Merce Cunningham's Split Sides probably seemed like the fulfillment of Cage's prophecy. The group that has struggled so famously with fame landed a gig out of singer Thom Yorke's fever dreams: providing abstract accompaniment for a dance troupe from the darkness of an orchestra pit, pretty much invisible to the audience, most of whom wouldn't have recognized the band if they'd been busking outside the theater. Most, but not all: A squad of somber Radiohead fans canvassed Lafayette Avenue for a miracle ticket to this one-time-only performance, for which scalpers were getting $500 a seat.
The lobby throbbed with art-world glitterati and rubberneckers ("Who's that woman with Lou Reed? Are he and Laurie Anderson finis?!"). Onstage, New York's arts-loving, smoke-hating mayor, Michael Bloomberg, delivered opening props to Cunningham, the 84-year-old high priest of modern dance, as Cunningham's company warmed up behind him. Meanwhile, Radiohead and their Icelandic prog-rock pals Sigur Ros stood squirming like kids at a school assembly. Yorke, in a battered black leather jacket, black shirt and pants, and white sneakers, periodically cracked wise to bassist Colin Greenwood; one briefly imagined that the singer might actually miss being the center of attention.
Per a dice roll, Radiohead were paired with the first segment of the evening: Cunningham likes to utilize chance elements, believing, as did Cage, that music and dance should function independently in performance. The piece began with Jonny Greenwood's lonely electronic keyboards; bell tones and violin drones rose up, then bits of a religious broadcast, then Yorke's wordless vocals, all looped and blurred. Dancers in sheer soot-gray-and-white leotards twisted around one another, creating a gorgeous human geometry. Only rarely, as when a woman repeatedly fell backward into her partner's arms -- recalling one of those psychotherapeutic trust exercises -- did gestures rise beyond the abstract. This was Rorschach art, open to any interpretation. Toward the end, as Yorke pogoed wildly over a studio-size mixing board in the pit, you could see him indulging his own interpretation: that he was rocking the decks at the coolest dance club on the planet.
Sigur Ros created even more magic in Split Sides' second half, performing with an amplified sculpture (built by lead singer Jonsi Birgisson's dad) and incorporating mic'd ballet shoes and a collection of modified music boxes that often made the dancers seem like windup toys in a psychedelic window display.
When it was all over, fans seemed equally dazzled and puzzled ("I had no idea what the fuck was going on," confided one). It was a lesson in how bands can disappear almost completely and still take you someplace amazing.
