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"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls."
Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham is widely recognized as the greatest living choreographer. Earlier in his career he was also one of the greatest American dancers. His earliest dance training was in tap and ballroom dance, with a local teacher, Mrs. Barrett, in his hometown of Centralia, Washington: before he was a modern dancer, Merce was a hoofer. What he also learned from Mrs. Barrett was that “dance is most deeply concerned with each single instant as it comes along.”
After five years as a soloist in the company of Martha Graham, he began choreographing independently, first in solo concerts, then in 1953 he formed his own company, whose fiftieth anniversary was celebrated in 2003. In his many works for the company, he has been noted for his collaborations with contemporary visual artists and musicians, especially with John Cage, his life partner from the 1940s until Cage’s death in 1992. In the course of their work together, they proposed a number of radical innovations. The most famous and controversial of these concerned the relationship of dance and music, both of which are time arts. Therefore, they came to the conclusion that the two should exist independently, occurring in the same time and space but without supporting or being connected to one another in the usual way.
Both Cunningham and Cage made extensive use of chance procedures, which meant that not only musical forms but narrative and other conventional elements of dance composition, such as cause and effect, climax and anticlimax, were also abandoned. Cunningham is not interested in telling stories or exploring psychological relationships: the subject matter of his dances is the dance itself.
His pioneering work in video and film, collaborating with filmmakers Charles Atlas and later Elliot Caplan, enlarged the possibilities of choreography for the camera. Cunningham himself is an imaginative visual artist, whose drawings of animals, birds, and insects have been collected in a book, Other Animals (2002).
Cunningham’s dances have often been described as having much in common with Dada (collage structures) and Zen (multiplicity of centers). This does not mean that the dances are formless, but their structure is organic, like something in nature, not preconceived and imposed on the material. But there is no improvisation: the dancers know precisely what they are going to do before they go on stage. |
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Biography
MERCE CUNNINGHAM, born in Centralia, Washington, received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle. From 1939 to 1945, he was a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage in April 1944. Learn more in Biography.
DanceForms
Merce Cunningham has been extending the frontiers of choreography for more than half a century, most recently with his use of the computer program Life Forms now called DanceForms. Learn more in DanceForms.
Honors & Awards
In 2003 Merce was made Officer of the French Legion of Honor. In November 2002, he was the recipient of the Arts and Business Council Kitty Carlisle Hart Award. In September 1990, Cunningham was awarded the National Medal of Arts in a ceremony at the White House. Learn more in Honors & Awards.
Bibliography
View the running bibliography of books and articles. Learn more in bibliography. To submit a piece use the archive form.
Merce Video
View the Merce video online! The video is an excerpt of A Lifetime of Dance DVD that you can purchase from the online store. The video is available in streaming Flash™ and requires broadband. View the Merce Video.
Donate Now!
Become part of the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s extended family and help continue Merce’s legacy. Make a donation today! Help support Merce’s Legacy by donating now!
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