Radiohead and Sigur Rós to play live for Merce Cunningham's Split Sides

Radiohead and Sigur Rós are writing new music for Split Sides, a piece by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and on opening night each band will play 20 minutes of it live. Jonny Greenwood tells Billboard.com that the dancers won’t have heard the music until they start¹.

The premiere, at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, on 14 October, is to be a fundraiser. The two bands have yet to decide how their halves meet. They might cross over into each other's music or agree a structure first, Greenwood says, and each might even play against type. It is raising lots of interesting problems about what dance music is.¹

Cunningham is working with two stage designs and two sets of costumes, a BAM spokesperson says, so that later performances can be put together in different ways.

From 16 to 18 October the piece runs again at BAM to tape, with musicians on stage recreating the bands' parts, and the company will do the same wherever else it takes the work.

I feel for them! We only just know what we’re doing. I’m sure it will be easy for them, but it just might be a bit weird.

Jonny Greenwood¹