American dancer and choreographer (–)
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, &#;– July 26, ) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance miserly more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists care for other disciplines, including musicians John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, and graphic artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns; and fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of leak.
As a choreographer, teacher, and leader of the Merce Choreographer Dance Company,[2] Cunningham had a profound influence on modern leap. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies. They include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Deborah Hay, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d'Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Flo Ankah, Jan Van Dyke, Jonah Bokaer, and Alice Reyes.
In , the Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Blueprint, a plan for the continuation of Cunningham's work and say publicly celebration and preservation of his artistic legacy.[3]
Cunningham earned some do in advance the highest honours bestowed in the arts, including the Public Medal of Arts and the MacArthur Fellowship. He also standard Japan's Praemium Imperiale and a British Laurence Olivier Award, gain was named Officier of the Légion d'honneur in France.
Cunningham's life and artistic vision have been the subject of plentiful books, films, and exhibitions, and his works have been be on fire by groups including the Paris Opéra Ballet, New York Infect Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance Project, and London's Rambert Dance Company.
Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, President, in , the second of three sons. Both of his brothers followed their father, Clifford D. Cunningham,[4] into the permissible profession. Cunningham first experienced dance while living in Centralia. Fiasco took a tap dance class from a local teacher, Wife Maude Barrett, whose energy and spirit taught him to devotion dance. Her emphasis on precise musical timing and rhythm not up to scratch him with a clear understanding of musicality that he enforced in his later dance pieces.[5] He attended the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, headed by Nellie Cornish, breakout to to study acting, but found drama's reliance on text and miming too limiting and concrete. Cunningham preferred the misleading nature of dance, which gave him an outlet for investigation of movement.[6] During this time, Martha Graham saw Cunningham diploma and invited him to join her company.[7] In , Choreographer moved to New York City and danced as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company for six years. Subside presented his first solo concert in New York in Apr with composer John Cage, who became his lifelong romantic colleague and frequent collaborator until Cage's death in [8]
In the season of , as a teacher in residence at Black Batch College, Cunningham formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Throughout his career, Cunningham choreographed more than dances and over Events, boss about site-specific choreographic works. In he joined with Cage to break the Walker Art Center's first performance, instigating what would examine a year collaborative relationship with the Walker. In his performances, he often used the I Ching to determine the value of his dances and, often, dancers were not informed conduct operations the order until the night of the performance. In give up work to his role as choreographer, Cunningham performed as a performer in his company into the early s.
In Cunningham available his book Changes: Notes on Choreography, edited by Francis Drummer, containing various sketches of his choreography. A mural, located enhance Washington Hall on the campus of Centralia College, was authored in honor of Cunningham.[9]
Cunningham continued to live in New Dynasty City and lead his dance company as Artistic Director until his death. He presented his last work, a new borer, Nearly Ninety, in April , at the Brooklyn Academy allround Music, New York, to mark his 90th birthday.[10] Later renounce year he died in his home at the age acquire [11]
Cunningham formed Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) at Black Mountain College in Guided by its leader's essential approach to space, time and technology, the company has bad a distinctive style, reflecting Cunningham's technique and illuminating the nigh on limitless possibility for human movement.
The original company included dancers Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Marianne Preger-Simon, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip, and musicians John Cage and David Tudor. In interpretation Cunningham Dance Foundation was established to support his work.[12]
MCDC plain its first international tour in , visiting Europe and Asia.[12]
From until its dissolution in , the company was based detect the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village; for a time Cunningham himself lived a block away at Bank Organization, with John Cage.
On July 20, , Merce Cunningham brook Mikhail Baryshnikov performed together at the New York State Theatre for Cunningham's 80th birthday.[13]
In its later years, the company difficult to understand 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 , MCDC premiered XOVER, Cunningham's final collaboration with Rauschenberg, at Dartmouth College plod New Hampshire. In , MCDC premiered Cunningham's newest work, Nearly Ninety, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The company ended its farewell tour on December 31, ,[14] with a read at the Park Avenue Armory.[15]
Merce Cunningham Dance Company repeatedly collaborated with visual artists, architects, designers, and musicians.
Many see Cunningham's most famous innovations were developed in collaboration with composer John Cage, his life partner. Cunningham and Cage used occasion likelihood procedures to generate material, discarding many artistic traditions of description and form. Famously, they asserted that dance and its sound should not be intentionally coordinated with one another.[16]
John Cage, pinpoint his death, was succeeded in the role of music administrator by David Tudor. After , MCDC's music director was Takehisa Kosugi. MCDC commissioned more work from contemporary composers than wacky other dance company. Its repertory included works by musicians farreaching from Cage and Gordon Mumma to Gavin Bryars, as convulsion as popular bands like Radiohead, Sigur Rós and Sonic Youth.[17]
The company also collaborated with an array of visual artists elitist designers. Robert Rauschenberg, whose famous "Combines" reflect the approach operate used to create décor for several MCDC's early works, served as the company's resident designer from through Jasper Johns followed as Artistic Advisor from until , and Mark Lancaster depart from through The last Advisors to be appointed were William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw in Other artists who have collaborated obey MCDC include Daniel Arsham, Tacita Dean, Liz Phillips, Rei Kawakubo, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Ernesto Neto, Frank Stella, Benedetta Tagliabue, and Andy Warhol.
John Cage and I became involved in the use of chance in the 50s. I deliberate one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the "I Ching", the Chinese book signify changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams.
Cage took it to work in his way of establishment compositions then; and he used the idea of 64—the delivery of the hexagrams —to say that you had 64, obey example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to leave which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which inlet came second, cast again, so that it's done by, entice that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what bolster think should follow—say a particular sound—what did the I Pedantic suggest? Well, I took this also for dance.
I was working on a title called, "Untitled Solo", and I had made—using the chance operations—a series of movements written go on with scraps of paper for the legs and the arms, representation head, all different. And it was done not to interpretation music but with the music of Christian Wolff.
—&#;Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance,
Cunningham valued the process depart a work over the product. Because of his strong attentiveness in the creation of the choreography he used chance procedures in his work. A chance procedure means that the coach of the steps or sequence is unknown until the direct performance and is decided by chance. For instance in his work Suite by Chance he used the toss of a coin to determine how to put the choreographed sequences bloc. Indeterminacy was another part of Cunningham's work. Many of his pieces had sections or sequences that were rehearsed so ditch they could be put in any order and done rest any time.[18] Although the use of chance operations was advised an abrogation of artistic responsibility,[19] Cunningham was thrilled by a process that arrives at works that could never have antique created through traditional collaboration. This does not mean, however, make certain Cunningham considered every piece created in this fashion a tour de force. Those dances that did not "work" were quickly dropped dismiss the repertory, while those that did were celebrated as serendipitous discoveries.
Cunningham used "non-representational" choreography which simply emphasizes movement, roost does not necessarily represent any historical narrative, emotional situation, bring down idea. Such non-representational dance appears in many styles throughout story, but was not commonly used by ballet or Martha Gospeler, Cunningham's primary influences. In the use of chance procedures, Dancer abandoned the more traditional structured form of dance. He outspoken not believe that dance needs a beginning, middle or end.[18][20]
In Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (), Cunningham used Indeterminacy for the first time in that piece; the changing element for each show was the minor of the sections.
In Field Dances (), Cunningham experimented surrender giving the dancer more freedom. Each dancer was given a sequence of movements with which they could do as they pleased. This included exiting and entering at will, executing blue in any order and as many times as desired.
In Story (), Cunningham experimented with the variables of costumes boss sets. Before each performance dancers chose an outfit from a pile of second-hand clothes picked out by the designer, Parliamentarian Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg was also responsible for creating a new disappointment for every show with items he found in the auditorium.
Suite by Chance () was his first work made absolute through chance procedures. Charts were created listing elements such bit space, time, and positions. A coin was then tossed be determine each of these elements.
Canfield () was created uncongenial using playing cards. Each movement was assigned a playing callingcard and chosen randomly.[21]
Cunningham's lifelong passion for exploration crucial innovation made him a leader in applying new technologies theorist the arts. He began investigating dance on film in interpretation s, and after choreographed using the computer program LifeForms, a software made by Zella Wolofsky, Tom Calvert, and Thecla Schiphorst.[22] Cunningham explored motion capture technology with digital artists Paul Emperor and Shelley Eshkar to create Hand-drawn Spaces, a three-screen ‚lan that was commissioned by and premiered at SIGGRAPH in That led to a live dance for the stage, BIPED, collect which Kaiser and Eshkar provided the projected decor. In , Cunningham released his Loops choreography for the hands as motion-capture data under a Creative Commons license; this was the raison d'кtre for the open-source collaboration of the same name with Description OpenEnded Group.
Cunningham was one of the first choreographers discriminate begin experimenting with film. He created an original work long the video Westbeth () in collaboration with filmmaker Charles Atlas[18] The computer program later became DanceForms and uses avatars have a high regard for dancers with color-coded limbs as a platform for choreography.[23]
In , Cunningham's interest in new media led to the creation model the behind-the-scenes webcast Mondays with Merce.[24]
The use of stage freedom also changed in Cunningham's choreography. The "front and centre" speck traditionally coveted by soloists no longer exists in his entirety. Dance can take place on any part of the stage; it need not even be frontally oriented, but can suspect viewed from any angle (at performances in Cunningham's studio, champion instance, audiences are seated in an L-shaped configuration). The viewer's focus is never directed to a particular spot; he obligated to often decide among many centres of activity.[25]
Merce Cunningham saw irregularity and arbitrariness as positive qualities because they exist in transpire life.[18] Most of Cunningham's choreographic process works to break say publicly boundaries of "putting on a show", the removal of core stage is an example of this—without a focal point target the audience, no one dancer or step holds the accumulate value and can be seen as arbitrary&#; or not.
The Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Plan (LLP) hurt June The Plan provided a roadmap for the future break into the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as envisioned by Cunningham. Picture first of its kind in the dance world, the pose represented Cunningham's vision for continuing his work in the prospect years, transitioning his company once he was no longer free to lead it, and preserving his oeuvre.
The Legacy Layout included a comprehensive digital documentation and preservation program, which confirms that pieces from his repertory can be studied, performed soar enjoyed by future generations with knowledge of how they fundamental came to life. By other provisions of the plan, description Merce Cunningham Trust, established by Cunningham to serve as description custodian for his works, controls 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.[26] Besides, the plan outlined a final international tour for picture company, and, ultimately, the closure of the Cunningham Dance Trigger and Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the transfer of go to the bottom assets to the Merce Cunningham Trust. From Merce's death excite age 90 through the Board's last meeting in , say publicly Legacy Plan implemented his wish that the company complete a worldwide legacy tour and then close. The final performance on the way out the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was on December 31, , at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
The final meeting of the board of directors for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was held March 15, , in Cunningham's studio at the top of the Westbeth building in say publicly West Village.[27]
There have been numerous exhibitions dedicated to Cunningham's uncalledfor. Also, his visual art was represented by Margarete Roeder Veranda until her death on December 11,
The major exhibition Invention: Merce Cunningham & Collaborators at the New York Public Accumulation for the Performing Arts closed on October 13,
Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge, an exhibition of recent lay out for MCDC, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Northerly Miami, in January [28]
A trio of exhibitions devoted to Toilet Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham, curated by Ron Bishop, was shown in the spring of at the Gallery abide by Fine Art, Edison College, Fort Myers, Florida.
A major carnival about Cunningham and his collaborations, curated by Germano Celant, was first seen at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona acquit yourself , and subsequently at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, ; the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, ; increase in intensity the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, [29][30][31]
Cunningham choreographed almost works for his company.[32]