Like many a Cunningham dance, the evening was playful and serious.

But each has its own theatrical or emotional quality and seems to exist in a world of its own as well as in a long continuum of Cunningham dance.

On Tuesday I caught a "History Matters" program covering a cross-section of five Cunningham dances from 1944 to 1960.

Oddly enough, however, much of the choreography presented by Ms. Lee, who is now based in New York, had the pulled-up, tilting-through-space look of Cunningham dance.

But in the end what one sees most clearly is the whole stage picture, which is as important here as it is in so many other Cunningham dances.

During this time, Martha Graham saw Cunningham dance and invited him to join her company.

Yet, there is a new, more technique-oriented Cunningham dance on view lately.

There has been nothing mechanical about the process of making these computer phrases, but, as in much Cunningham dance, the struggle to learn has left each dancer's individual imprint on the movement.

As in all one-time Cunningham "Events," this one consisted of sections of disparate Cunningham dances.

One looked at a Cunningham dance like one looked at a Pollock painting, or maybe more appropriately a Rauschenberg painting or collage.