Not A Moment Too Soon

Trevor Carlson, close friend and Executive Director to Merce Cunningham, reflects on the 12 years he spent with the choreographer, offering a rare look at the final days of a master.

Filled with unseen footage of Merce, this show is a tapestry of video, text, music and dance. As he weaves in and around projection panels hung onstage, Carlson’s narration takes us through recollections of precious moments he spent with Merce. A journey into identity, memory and emotions, the dream-like solo shifts between monologues and intimate clips of the iconic artist at work and at play.

In 2001, in a dressing room in Australia, Cunningham stared at his reflection while filming himself on his own camcorder. Interested in the fleeting nature of things, he uttered the words: ‘not a moment too soon’. Taking this recording as a starting point, Carlson tells the history of their adventures, tapping into key periods of Cunningham’s (1919-2009) later life and saying farewell to a loved one.