Space was always central to Merce's choreographic intention for the dance; there were twenty-one different spatial paths, which carried the dancers through the space, not just into it. He says the “summer” part of the title came later. Chance processes were used to determine entrances and exits, number of dancers onstage, who did what phrase when, and so forth. Merce had completed most of the time-consuming chance operations in New York, before rehearsals began in Connecticut. At Connecticut College we worked in a wonderful space— the enormous parlor/ballroom on the ground floor of a large, handsome stone dormitory. Tall windows opened onto an expanse of green lawn and vistas of lush and stately shade trees. It was a hot and humid summer, as summers in New London tended to be. A summer space.

The movement vocabulary is comprised of a variety of turns—slow turns, fast turns, jumping turns, turns ending in falls, and complex combinations of turns, as well as leaps, jumps, leg extensions, arabesques—a vocabulary far more balletic than had appeared in previous Cunningham group dances and yet, although the actual shapes and combinations of steps look deceptively like classical ballet, the abrupt changes in direction and speed, the rhythmic permutations unrelated to Morton Feldman's music, the devouring of space using walks, runs, skips, and leaps, and the surprising use of falls to the floor were not at all familiar to ballet dancers when they came to perform Summerspace. Nor were these ballet dancers attuned to the concept of “stillness.”