Merce Cunningham

1919 - 2009

Biography(b Centrala, WA, 16 April 1919; d New York, NY, 26 July 2009).
American dancer and choreographer. A master of modern dance, he set the precedent for artistic invention involving the interaction of dance, music, and the visual arts. He trained at Cornish School, Seattle, WA, where he met the musician and composer John Cage. In 1939 he joined the Martha Graham Company in New York. His début as a choreographer and solo dancer came in 1944 when he and Cage presented a programme of music and dances in a small theatre on 16th Street, New York. In 1948 he was commissioned by the New York Ballet Society to choreograph The Seasons, for which Cage wrote the score and Isamu Noguchi designed the sets. When the Cunningham Dance Company was formed at BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE, NC, in 1953, Cage became its composer, conductor and musical director. An untitled ‘event’ in the previous year had been organized by, among others, Cage, Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and poet Charles Olson (1910–70) and had included music, film, dance and poetry.

Cunningham exerted a powerful physical presence based on a muscular grace and almost sculptural attitude. Although he was never a collaborator in the strictest sense, he consistently created performances and theatrical ‘events’ which exploited individuality and autonomy of musicians, dancers and artists. He was among the first to employ programmed chance, or structured disorder, as a creative methodology. His most noted partnership in the visual arts was with Rauschenberg, who travelled with the company, designing sets, costumes and lighting (1961–4). Jasper Johns succeeded Rauschenberg as Cunningham’s artistic director and provided design opportunities for artists such as Frank Stella (Scramble, 1967), Andy Warhol (Rainforest, 1968) and Bruce Nauman (Tread, 1970). In 1986 a Cunningham/Cage collaboration, Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake’, opened the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. [Constance W. Glenn. "Cunningham, Merce." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T020677.]

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