Much of Tacita Dean's recent work in film has been portraiture, and her scrupulous attention has brought forth a range of engrossing characters, many of them older men. Poet and translator Michael Hamburger gave Dean a chatty tour of his apple orchard and storerooms in a film exhibited in London last year. In this exhibition, dancer-choreographer Merce Cunningham is seated, and silent, in his nearly empty studio. Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films), 2008, the unwieldy title of the installation, conveys everything and nothing about the films projected onto screens scattered throughout Dia:Beacon's colonnaded lower level. In static, one-take shots, Cunningham, on Carlson's cues, looks to his right, or straight ahead, or rests his chin on one hand to mark the three movements of his longtime partner's infamous score. The simplicity and directness of the choreography, like that of the filmmaking, belie the affective power of the homage. Like the beatific quietude of artist Mario Merz in Dean's sun-dappled 2002 film, Cunningham's calmness makes him a repository for viewers' assumptions; one can't help but imagine the experiences and emotions compressed into his stony performance. The downward tug of melancholic sentiment, one of Dean's trademarks, seems at odds with the principle of chance operations that guided Cage and Cunningham—and, for that matter, Bruce Nauman's multichannel Cagean exercise that was on view until recently in this space. But the tension is remarkable.