Thanks to the Beach Sessions Dance Series, New Yorkers had the treat of a double beach bird feature. In addition to the live performance, “Beach Birds for Camera” aired the night before as part of the Rockaway Film Festival. Taken together, the two occasions provided the most perfect tutorial in Cunningham technique one could ask for.

“Beach Birds for Camera,” directed in 1993 by Eliott Caplan, draws the viewer close to the action as if part of the ensemble ourselves. Performing to piano and rainstick by John Cage, the older generation of Cunningham dancers, uniformly slender and narrow in the hip, are like multiples made with one cut. The white unitards capped with a stripe of black that spans the shoulders and arms, designed by Marsha Skinner, reveal every muscle. Shimmying chest and torso isolations render a ruffling of breast feathers; a perch in plié on relevé with heels together in first position, springs into a series of skittering jumps. The dancers hop on one leg to balance, the other leg held extended, quivering, for an excruciatingly long time. Little bird parties form in twos and threes as the flock interacts. One bird drags a leg around as if injured. In a particularly tender moment, a bird hovers in a slight stoop with his wings extended as another from behind settles her wings to rest ever so gently on top of his. With but a subtle tip of the head, she conjures a suggestion of dominance. The fourteen original performers that included Robert Swinston as well as Kimberly Bartosik, Michael Cole, Alan Good, David Kulick, and Carol Teitelbaum, who participated in the Beach Series reconstruction, are the epitome of movement clarity and precision.