Merce Cunningham: Digital wizard

I wish we could see Merce Cunningham's Winterbranch again. That might seem perverse to anyone who remembers that some people experienced it with gritted teeth during the Cunningham Dance Company's first London season at Sadler's Wells in 1964. And anyway, we have seen its choreography not so long ago, in one of the events that Cunningham stages every now and again, putting various of his old dances together into a non-stop evening. But out of its original context, the movement from Winterbranch, primarily falling and rising again, could look comical. Nobody laughed, the way it was first presented.

For one thing, it was given in darkness, the falling, crawling or scurrying bodies visible only in beams from a lamp manipulated by Cunningham's art director, the painter Robert Rauschenberg. Then the music by LaMonte Young, "2 Sounds", was made from screechy noises – ashtrays scraped on a mirror, wood rubbed on a Chinese gong – amplified to the limit of endurance, or beyond. Asked whether Winterbranch had a story, Cunningham quoted other people's interpretations: "(a) bombed cities – New York; (b) concentration camps – Germany; (c) nuclear war – Japan; (d) shipwreck – my favourite. From a sea-captain's wife. Right you are if you think you are. I prefer directness, but that's not always possible in a society so indirect." For the record, I saw in it night, cold, dark and pain.

Cunningham remarked apropos Winterbranch "there is a streak of violence in me", but only a few months later he made one of the happiest of ballets, How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run; and – joy, joy – a revival of that is in London this week in Cunningham's too-short season at the Barbican. Despite the title, you won't find any sporting tips. Eight dancers perform wonderfully free, open, sporty movements, sometimes playing imaginary games, in teams or determin-edly alone. In the original cast, Cunningham himself seemed the archetypal champion, solitary, pleased, condescending.

At 83, he doesn't attempt that any more, but will be one of the speakers, with David Vaughan, reading anecdotes from the writings of his long-time music director and associate, the late John Cage. They are stop-watch-timed to last one minute each (so will need to be read at different speeds) with a minute's pause in between. Cage used to read them alone; they are mostly about incidents from Cage's life, or sometimes Cunningham's. As amusing as the dancing, they made me think Cage and Cunningham must be thoroughly nice people, even before I met them and found that true.

Vaughan (English, a writer, actor, singer, dancer and archivist) sometimes had to stand in for Cage, and suggested using two readers at once. Cage agreed because "it will be more like music", so now it's always done in the duet version. We are getting this work because Cunningham this year gave a season at Lincoln Center in New York, celebrating his company's golden jubilee. He was asked, "Fifty years – why not some history?" and How to Pass... was one of four early ballets chosen for the occasion.

Cunningham leaves these reconstructions to one of his dancers, Robert Swinston, who consults other former performers and is greatly aided by Cunningham's old partner, Carolyn Brown. She, Merce says, "can tell the dancers not only what to do, but how to do it", and he is satisfied that the revival "looks pretty much as it did".

He's kept busy with an output of new works that would daunt choreographers half his age. Four of the pieces coming to London were made in the past couple of years, including one world premiere. "I'll continue choreography as long as it's practicable." All his pieces since 1991 have been made using a computer programme, LifeForms, as a tool. "But it's only used in part of each dance," Cunningham said. "That's partly because I'm not skilled in computing, but also there are many things it cannot do yet. I'm sure it will go on developing: you know how much computers change."

LifeForms gives him a humanlike figure made of wires; with this he can construct movement "in ways one would not have thought possible". Another advantage is that Cunningham can start work on a new dance, even when the company is not in rehearsal. In the latest work, Fluid Canvas, he uses material from a motion-capture session of his own choreographed hand movements, and says he is challenging the dancers' sense of timing and rhythm "in ways like never before, with speed and complex phrasing".

He still travels with the company on its tours. Recently he did drop out of a trip to Greece and Sicily, because it involved a four-hour bus journey ("European buses are not comfortable"), but he joined them for Paris, Berlin, Reykjavik and Oslo. The other day he was in Battery Park, Manhattan, where the company played in the open air as part of a festival to revitalise the area around the World Trade Centre. It rained, he told me, and "there was a roof over the stage, but it had holes in it. So the stage hands," he gives a delighted chuckle, "leaned in and wiped the wet patches with cloths."

So Cunningham concerns himself with the company's present and future, and it is good to hear from him that a Cunningham Trust is in hand to preserve his work, which hopefully will avoid the disasters that have affected the legacies of Frederick Ashton and Martha Graham. "They will be able to present the dances and teach them to new casts, even to other companies." Besides the current repertoire, 10 of the older pieces have so far been reconstituted and recorded. And when I say I wish Winterbranch were among them, he replies that that might happen – he would like to have it again, too. Watch this space.

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is at the Barbican, London EC2 from tomorrow to 14 Sep (020-7638 8891)