Read this book if you want a vivid account of the eminent dancer Carolyn Brown's travels and performances with Merce Cunningham from 1951 to 1971 (and her compulsive desire to please him). Brown kept meticulous journals and wrote sheaves of letters, all of which she quotes liberally. Notwithstanding the book's heft, she writes in a lean prose that, like her dancing, is athletic while always at the service of insight.

But if you want a memoir of John Cage—who foregrounds the cover photo and gets top billing in the subtitle—the book may disappoint you. This is a dance memoir, in the tradition of those authored by other important American dancers. Its pages brim with choreographic notes, travelogues, backstage gossip, and prodigious accounts of meals, illnesses, and physical injuries (three things that haunt dancers' lives). The book's intended audience is certainly not musicians, but other dancers and nostalgic fans of the author and Cunningham in their prime. Still, if you're willing to read closely, you can sift out many insights into Cage's personality, behavior, and opinions.

The flaws of this handsomely designed, elegant book are mostly trivial. (Brown's frequent use of the single name “Tudor,” for example, doesn't work in a book that regularly deals with both pianist David Tudor and choreographer Antony Tudor.) But one can also fault the book for bogging down in viscous piles of facts. A good editor should have trimmed the fussy detailing of itineraries, flight delays, dinner guests, place settings, wine lists, booking problems, and disputes with theater managers over lighting, set décor, and rehearsal times. (As Thoreau said, once you know the principle, you don't need to know every incident.)

That fault of viscosity stems from a problem of method. On one hand, Brown's prose almost always brightens when she quotes from her journals and letters. The immediacy of her frustrations, exhilarations, fretting, and joy peeks through in her verbal fragments from the period. On the other hand, writing from sources of the moment can blind an author to a narrative arc beyond mere chronology. The of-the-moment tales of events in this book come off as lip-chewingly accurate but sometimes frivolous or merely actuarial—the microscope trumps the wide-angle lens. Looking back through the book we wonder: Does the author see themes, patterns, even archetypes in her life or art? Does she have an aerial perspective of what she created and underwent? If so, she shares almost none of it, and that's a shame.

But criticism is easy. The fact remains, as Panofsky said, that the act of pruning presupposes the tree. This is a good book, even when you have to climb through it. Among its many virtues: Brown beautifully chronicles the feeling of performing Cunningham's major works of the period. She describes the larger gestures of his choreography (and Rauschenberg's costuming, lighting, and set design) but with nuances that bring you as close to the bodily experience of dance as prose has a right to.Footnote ¹ She also acts as a tour guide, conveying the claustrophobia of close-quartered transportation (especially a VW bus), the dazzling diversity of big cities, and many a cautionary tale about life on the road, filled with indifferent audiences, technical snafus, stage fright, exhaustion, and boredom. Brown gradually becomes committed to the dignity and sorrows of artistic life (35, 86–87). Along the way, she takes many verbal snapshots—not always flattering—of avant-garde heroes: Peggy Guggenheim, Nam June Paik, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Stockhausen, Rzewski, Varèse, Duchamp, and, of course, Feldman, Wolff, and her then husband, Earle Brown.

Throughout the book she leads the reader (though not far) into Cunningham's dancing technique, studio atmosphere, teaching methods, formal ideas, and, more than anything else, moods. While I could try to summarize her complex feelings about Cunningham as a person, teacher, and troupe leader, I won't do that here. It's the “Twenty Years with Cage” that readers of this journal will want most to explore.

Brown treats Cage as one of a large cast of characters—a major player, no doubt, but one who gets only a mosaic for a portrait. Allow me to collate some fragments: Cage is a prankster (33), a charmer (304), a “lamb” (247), a mediator (34), humble (448), always spreading cheer (565), organizing fun activities (362, 556), and, above all, showing his generosity (208) in various ways. A joyful (230) man of energy and dreams (144), Cage loves to drink (339) and play games (340), the proverbial “cockeyed optimist” (235) who lightens everyone's load (525) and is often a tender confidant (542–43, 581–82), interpreter of Merce's moods (137–38), and sometimes willing scapegoat when things go awry (314). But he also has less appealing sides. Cage can be thin-skinned (429) about bad reviews (305, 424) or booing (168), testy (198), paranoid (557–58), disappointed (138), and sometimes given to depression, anger (104–5), even rage (585–86). Brown depicts a Cage less transcendent and more emotionally invested than he often wanted outsiders to think.

Cage was also, of course, an opinionated eccentric. Brown conveys his views on touring (164–65), Muzak (279), uncommitted (or unprepared) performers (440–41), her own dancing (139) and, of course, Merce Cunningham (118–119, 165). When it comes to her opinions about his music, though, Brown mostly holds her tongue, though conspicuously notes his “erratic” piano playing (380) and his insistence on ear-splitting volume for anything amplified (331, 364, 381, 492). Still, in two candid passages she lets us know that Cunningham's dancers—herself included—essentially disliked Cage's compositions (36, 172). Yet they also found any substitutes for them jarring (246). Whereas music and choreography were said to merely coexist in the troupe's dances, it was a mutual obliviousness of a very distinct sort—and that was what Cage and Cunningham supplied.

One cannot escape in this book Brown's constant undertone of regret for not having enough “fight or flight” response to Cunningham: how would things have been different had she stood up more to his difficult behavior or ignored more of his dark moods? The beautiful prose of Chance and Circumstance seems to grow like pearls from a certain irritation of her psyche by a mentor's cruelty and caprice. Nevertheless, the book is a love story, however doomed. Early on, a deep affection for Cage spills out, as does profound admiration for (and fear of) Cunningham. But by the end, from the vista of old age, Brown has confessed her love for both men: John for what he gave her and Merce for what she gave him.