It didn’t rock, reports Joan Acocella. “You can find dancing that is more poignant, or easier to watch, than Merce Cunningham’s, but I don’t think any choreographer in the world gives us a closer look at the truth. Beauty without reasons, and without anxiety over the lack of reasons: that may be what life was like before we started making it up. Sometimes, when I look at Cunningham’s stage, I think I’m seeing the world on the seventh day, with everything new and just itself—before the snake, and the tears, and the explanations.”