Merce Cunningham

Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 â€" July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American modern dance for more than 50 years. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.

As a choreographer, teacher and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies, and they include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Floanne Ankah and Jonah Bokaer.

In 2009, the Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Plan, a precedent-setting plan for the continuation of Cunningham’s work and the celebration and preservation of his artistic legacy.

Cunningham earned some of the highest honors bestowed in the arts, including the National Medal of Arts and the MacArthur Fellowship. He also received Japan's Praemium Imperiale, a British Laurence Olivier Award, and was named Officier of the Légion d'honneur in France.

Cunningham’s life and artistic vision have been the subject of numerous books, films, and exhibitions, and his works have been presented by groups including the Paris Opéra Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance Project, and London's Rambert Dance Company.

Biography

Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington in 1919, the second of three sons. Both his brothers followed their father, Clifford D. Cunningham, into the legal profession. Cunningham initially received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle, which he attended from 1937 to 1939 at age 20. During this time, Martha Graham saw Cunningham dance and invited him to join her company. When 1939 came, Cunningham moved to New York and began a six-year stint as a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He presented his first solo concert in New York in April 1944 with composer John Cage, who became his life partner and frequent collaborator until Cage's death in 1992.

In the summer of 1953, as a teacher in residence at Black Mountain College, Cunningham formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as a forum to explore his new ideas on dance and the performing arts.

Over the course of his career, Cunningham choreographed more than 200 dances and over 800 “Events,” which are site-specific choreographic works. In 1963 he joined with Cage to create the Walker Art Center's first performance, instigating what would be a 25-year collaborative relationship with the Walker. In his performances, he often used the I Ching in order to determine the sequence of his dances and, often, dancers were not told until the night of the performance. In addition to his role as choreographer, Cunningham performed as a dancer in his company into the early 1990s.

He continued to lead his company until his death, and presented a new work, Nearly Ninety, in April 2009, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, to mark his 90th birthday.

Cunningham lived in New York City, and was Artistic Director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He died peacefully in his home at the age of 90.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Cunningham formed Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) at Black Mountain College in 1953. Guided by its leader's radical approach to space, time and technology, the Company has forged a distinctive style, reflecting Cunningham’s technique and illuminating the near limitless possibility for human movement.

The original Company included dancers Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip, and musicians John Cage and David Tudor.

In its early years, MCDC toured in a Volkswagen bus driven by John Cage with just enough room for six dancers, the two musicians, and a stage manager, who was often Robert Rauschenberg. MCDC’s first international tour in 1964â€"which included performances in Western and Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, and Japanâ€"solidified a constant stream of national and international bookings. In the years since, MCDC has continued to tour the world to critical and popular acclaim, serving as an ambassador for contemporary American culture.

From 1971 until its dissolution in 2012, the company was based in the Westbeth Artists Community in West Village; for a time Cunningham himself lived a block away at 107 Bank Street, with John Cage.

Recent performances and projects include a two-year residency at Dia:Beacon, where MCDC performed Events, Cunningham’s site-specific choreographic collages, in the galleries of Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt among others. In 2007, MCDC premiered XOVER, Cunningham’s final collaboration with Rauschenberg, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In 2009, MCDC premiered Cunningham’s newest work, Nearly Ninety, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Company concluded its farewell tour on December 31, 2011.

Artistic philosophy

Collaboration

Since its founding, Merce Cunningham Dance Company has frequently collaborated with visual artists, architects, designers, and musicians.

From the company's beginnings, Cunningham collaborated with John Cage, its Musical Advisor and Cunningham's life partner from the 1940s until Cage’s death in 1992. Cage had the greatest influence on his practice. Together, Cunningham and Cage proposed a number of radical innovations. The most famous and controversial of these concerned the relationship between dance and music, which they concluded may occur in the same time and space, but should be created independently of one another. They also made extensive use of chance procedures, abandoning not only musical forms, but narrative and other conventional elements of dance compositionâ€"such as cause and effect, and climax and anticlimax. For Cunningham the subject of his dances was always dance itself.

After his death, John Cage was succeeded in the role of music director by David Tudor. Since 1995, MCDC has been under the music direction of Takehisa Kosugi. MCDC has commissioned more work from contemporary composers than any other dance company. Its repertory includes works by musicians ranging from John Cage and Gordon Mumma to Gavin Bryars and even contemporary bands like Radiohead, Sigur Rós and Sonic Youth.

The Company has also collaborated with an array of visual artists and designers. Robert Rauschenberg, whose famous “Combines” reflect the approach he used to create décor for a number of MCDC’s early works, served as the Company’s resident designer from 1954 through 1964. Jasper Johns followed as Artistic Advisor from 1967 until 1980, and Mark Lancaster from 1980 through 1984. The last Advisors to be appointed were William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw in 1984. Other artists who have collaborated with MCDC include Daniel Arsham, Tacita Dean, Liz Phillips, Rei Kawakubo, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Ernesto Neto, Frank Stella, Benedetta Tagliabue, and Andy Warhol.

Chance operations

John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the "I Ching," the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams.

Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64â€"the number of the hexagrams â€"to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should followâ€"say a particular soundâ€"what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance.

I was working on a title called, “Untitled Solo,” and I had madeâ€"using the chance operationsâ€"a series of movements written on scraps of paper for the legs and the arms, the head, all different. And it was done not to the music but with the music of Christian Wolff.

â€"Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance, 2000

Although the use of chance operations was considered an abrogation of artistic responsibility, Cunningham was thrilled by a process that arrives at works that could never have been created through traditional collaboration. This does not mean, however, that Cunningham holds every piece created in this fashion is a masterpiece. Those dances that do not "work" are quickly dropped from repertory, while those that do are celebrated as serendipitous discoveries.

Another of Cunningham's innovations was the development of what might be called "non-representative" dance which simply emphasizes movement: in Cunningham's choreography, dancers do not necessarily represent any historical figure, emotional situation, or idea.

Use of technology

Cunningham’s lifelong passion for exploration and innovation has made him a leader in applying new technologies to the arts. He began investigating dance on film in the 1970s, and since 1991 has choreographed using the computer program DanceForms. Cunningham explored motion capture technology with digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar to create Hand-drawn Spaces, a three-screen animation that was commissioned by and premiered at SIGGRAPH in 1998. This led to a live dance for the stage, BIPED, for which Kaiser and Eshkar provided the projected decor. In 2008, Cunningham released his Loops choreography for the hands as motion-capture data under a Creative Commons license; this was the basis for the open source collaboration of the same name with The OpenEnded Group.

In 2009, Cunningham’s interest in new media led to the creation of Mondays with Merce. This webcast series provides a never-before-seen look at the Company and Cunningham’s teaching technique with video of advanced technique class, Company rehearsal, archival footage, and interviews with current and former Company members, choreographers, and collaborators.

Legacy Plan

The Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Plan (LLP) in June 2009. The Plan provided a roadmap for the future of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as envisioned by Cunningham. The first of its kind in the dance world, the plan represents Cunningham’s vision for continuing his work in the upcoming years, transitioning his Company once he was no longer able to lead it, and preserving his oeuvre.

The Legacy Plan includes a comprehensive documentation and preservation program, which will ensure that pieces from his repertory can be studied, performed and enjoyed by future generations with knowledge of how they originally came to life. By other provisions of the plan, the Merce Cunningham Trust, established by Cunningham to serve as the custodian for his works, takes control of his dances for licensing purposes; Cunningham associates prepared detailed records of the dances so they could be licensed and given authentic productions by other companies. In addition, to ensure the authenticity of the presentation of his oeuvre once Cunningham was no longer able to lead his Company, the plan outlined a final international tour for the Company, and, ultimately, the closure of the Cunningham Dance Foundation and Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the transfer of all assets to the Merce Cunningham Trust. From Merce's death at age 90 through the Board's last meeting in 2012, the Legacy Plan implemented his wish that the Company complete a worldwide legacy tour and then close. December 31, 2011 was the final performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The final meeting of the Board of Directors for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was held March 15, 2012, in Cunningham's studio at the top of the Westbeth building in the West Village.

Exhibitions

There have been numerous exhibitions dedicated to Cunningham’s work. In addition, he is a visual artist represented by Margarete Roeder Gallery.

The major exhibition Invention: Merce Cunningham & Collaborators at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts closed on October 13, 2007.

Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge, an exhibition of recent design for MCDC, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, in January 2007.

A trio of exhibitions devoted to John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham, curated by Ron Bishop, were shown in the spring of 2002 at the Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College, Fort Myers, Florida.

A major exhibition about Cunningham and his collaborations, curated by Germano Celant, was first seen at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona in 1999, and subsequently at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 1999; the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2000; and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2000.

Works

Cunningham choreographed almost two hundred works for his company.

Suite for Five (1956â€"1958)
Music: John Cage, Music for Piano
Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting: Beverly Emmons

Crises (1960)
Music: Conlon Nancarrow (from Rhythm Studies for Player Piano)
Costumes, Lighting: Robert Rauschenberg

Rainforest (1968)
Music: David Tudor
Décor: Andy Warhol (Silver Clouds)
Costumes: Jasper Johns (uncredited)
Lighting: Richard Nelson

Second Hand (1970)
Music: John Cage, (Cheap Imitation)
Décor & Costumes: Jasper Johns
Lighting: Richard Nelson (1970) Christine Shallenberg (2008)

Sounddance (1975)
Music: David Tudor, Toneburst & Untitled (1975/1994)
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Mark Lancaster

Fabrications (1987)
Music: Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, Short Waves & SBbr
Décor, Costumes: Dove Bradshaw
Lighting: Josh Johnson

CRWDSPCR (1993)
Music: John King, blues 99
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Mark Lancaster

Ocean (1994)
Music: David Tudor,Soundings: Ocean Diary and Andrew Culver, Ocean 1â€"95
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Marsha Skinner

BIPED (1999)
Music: Gavin Bryars, Biped
Décor: Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar
Costumes: Suzanne Gallo
Lighting: Aaron Copp

Split Sides (2003)
Music: Radiohead, Sigur Rós
Décor: Robert Heishman, Catherine Yass
Costumes: James Hall
Lighting: James F. Ingalls

Views on Stage (2004)
Music: John Cage, ASLSP and Music for Two
Décor: Ernesto Neto, Other Animal
Costumes: James Hall
Lighting: Josh Johnson

eyeSpace (2006)
Music: Mikel Rouse, International Cloud Atlas
Décor: Henry Samelson, Blues Arrive Not Anticipating What Transpires Even Between Themselves
Costumes: Henry Samelson
Lighting: Josh Johnson

eyeSpace (2007)
Music: David Behrman, Long Throw and/or Annea Lockwood, Jitterbug
Décor: Daniel Arsham, ODE/EON
Costumes: Daniel Arsham
Lighting: Josh Johnson

XOVER (2007)
Music: John Cage, Aria (1958) and Fontana Mix (1958)
Décor & Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg, Plank
Lighting: Josh Johnson

Nearly Ninety (2009)
Music: John Paul Jones, Takehisa Kosugi, Sonic Youth
Décor: Benedetta Tagliabue
Costumes: Romeo Gigli for io ipse idem
Lighting: Brian MacDevitt
Video Design: Franc Aleu

Honors and awards

2009
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award
Skowhegan Medal for Performance

2008
Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

2007
Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts, State University of New York
Montgomery Fellow (Arts and Literature), Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

2006
Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA

2005
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN
Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo

2004
Officier of the Légion d'Honneur, France

2003
Edward MacDowell Medal in interdisciplinary art, the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough NH

2002
Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts (Arts & Business Council), New York NY
MATA (Music at the Anthology) Award, New York NY
Medal of the City of Dijon, France

2001
Coat of Arms of the City of Mulhouse, France
La Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris (echelon vermeil) from the Mayor of Paris
Career Transition for Dancers Award, New York NY
Herald Archangel Award, Glasgow, Scotland
Village Award, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, New York
Honorary degree from Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

2000
Nijinsky Special Prize, Monaco
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, New York NY
Named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, Washington DC

1999
Premio Internazionale “Gino Tani,” Rome
Handel Medallion from the Mayor of New York City NY
Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement, San Francisco CA
Fellow of the Academy of Performing Arts, Hong Kong
The key to the City of Montpellier, France

1998
Bagley Wright Fund Established Artists Award, Seattle WA

1997
Barnard College Medal of Distinction, New York NY
Grand Prix of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, France

1996
Nellie Cornish Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA

1995
Honorary degree from Wesleyan University, Middletown CT
Carina Ari Award (Grand Prix Video Danse with Elliot Caplan), Stockholm, Sweden
Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, Italy

1993
Inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, NY
Dance and Performance Award for Best Performance by a Visiting Artist, London, England
Medal of Honor from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain
(With John Cage, posthumously) the Wexner Prize of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus OH
New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”), New York NY
Tiffany Award from the International Society of Performing Arts Administrators, New York NY

1990
National Medal of Arts, Washington DC
Porselli Prize, Italy
Digital Dance Premier Award, London, England
Award of Merit from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, New York NY

1989
Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, France

1988
Dance/USA National Honor, New York NY

1987
Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX

1985
Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (Pictures), London, England
Kennedy Center Honors, Washington DC
MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago IL

1984
Inducted as an Honorary Member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York NY

1983
The Mayor of New York’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture, New York NY

1982
The Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, Durham NC
Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France

1977
Capezio Award, New York NY

1975
New York State Award, Albany NY

1972
BITEF Award, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Honorary degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana IL

1966
Gold Medal for Choreographic Invention at the Fourth International Festival of Dance, Paris

1964
Medal of the Society for the Advancement of Dancing in Sweden, Stockholm

1960
Dance Magazine Award, New York NY

1959 & 1954
Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York NY

Footnotes

Sources

• Bredow, Moritz von. 2012. "Rebellische Pianistin. Das Leben der Grete Sultan zwischen Berlin und New York." (Biography, 368 pp, in German). Schott Music, Mainz, Germany. ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9 (Biography on pianist Grete Sultan, John Cages's and Merce Cunningham's close friend. Many aspects regarding Cage and Cunningham!)
• Bremser, M. (Ed) (1999), Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10364-9
• Cunningham, Merce (1968), Changes/Notes on Choreography. Something Else Press.
• Cunningham, M. and Lesschaeve, J. (1992), The Dancer and the Dance. Marion Boyars Publishers. ISBN 0-7145-2931-1
• Vaughan, David (1999), Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Aperture. ISBN 0-89381-863-1
• Vaughan, D. and Cunningham, M. (2002), Other Animals. Aperture. ISBN 978-0-89381-946-0
• Kostelanetz, R. (1998), Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80877-3
• Brown, Carolyn (2007), Chance and Circumstance Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-40191-1 Biography 53750

External links

• Merce Cunningham Dance Company
• Archival footage of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing in Sounddance in 2009 at Jacob's Pillow.
• DLAR Artists bio
• PBS:American Masters biography
• Kennedy Center biography
• Archive footage of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing Cunningham's piece Banjo in 1955 at Jacob's Pillow
• American Ballet Theater biography
• Merce Cunningham Film & Video at Electronic Arts Intermix
• Merce Cunningham ìn the Mediateca Media Art Space
• Merce Cunningham at the Internet Movie Database
• Merce Cunningham â€" Daily Telegraph obituary
• Guardian Obituary
• Obituary in the Star-Gazette
• New York Times Obituary 28 July 2009.