Fanfare reviews John Cage: Sixteen Dances
John Cage composed these short dances in 1951, to accompany choreography by Merce Cunningham. In fact, according to Cunningham, much of the movement and rhythmic impetus came first, to which Cage coordinated musical phrases drawn from a chart of 64 different sonorities.
The narrow melodic contours, crisply articulated events, and repeated motifs provide an attractively shifting soundscape that often makes me think of Stravinsky, of all people.