Merce Cunningham(1919 — 2009)
Merce Cunningham
États-Unis
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Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) was an American dancer and choreographer, a major figure in modern and contemporary dance. A pioneer of abstract dance, he revolutionized choreography by detaching it from music and narrative.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. »
Key Facts
- Born in 1919 in Centralia (Washington State), died in 2009 in New York
- Solo dancer in Martha Graham's company from 1939 to 1945
- Founded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1953 at Black Mountain College
- A lifelong artistic and personal collaboration with composer John Cage (beginning in 1942), introducing chance and indeterminacy into the creative process
- Pioneer of computer-assisted dance (LifeForms / DanceForms software) starting in the 1990s
Works & Achievements
The first choreography composed entirely through chance operations, set to electronic music by Christian Wolff. A manifesto for Cunningham's new method.
A “pointillist” ballet with speckled sets and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, in which the dancers seem to blend into the space around them.
A piece famous for Andy Warhol's floating silver pillows and the music of David Tudor, a perfect example of collaboration between dance, art, and sound.
Sets by Jasper Johns inspired by Marcel Duchamp's “Large Glass,” a tribute to modern art on stage.
A virtuosic, high-energy group piece set to a saturated electronic score by David Tudor.
A monumental work conceived with John Cage: the dancers move in a circle, surrounded by one hundred and twelve musicians.
A pioneering show blending dance, motion capture, and digital projections, set to music by Gavin Bryars.
A book in which Cunningham lays out his method of composition by chance and his relationship to movement.
Anecdotes
To compose his choreographies, Merce Cunningham tossed coins or consulted the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. Chance then decided the order of the movements, their direction, or their duration. Cunningham accepted these results even when they seemed impossible or baffling, in order to free dance from its habits.
With his partner, the composer John Cage, Cunningham invented a radical rule: music and dance were created separately and shared only their duration. The dancers often rehearsed in silence and heard the score only on opening night, discovering at the same time as the audience how the two worlds met.
In 1968, for the ballet “RainForest,” Andy Warhol set up his “Silver Clouds” on stage: silver, helium-filled pillows that floated freely. The dancers had to move among these unpredictable clouds, which drifted on the air currents, some threatening to float off toward the spotlights or into the audience.
At nearly 70, Cunningham took up choreographing on a computer using the software LifeForms (later DanceForms). On it he invented sequences of movements sometimes so strange that no human body would ever have imagined them, then challenged his dancers to take on the task of performing them.
Cunningham danced and choreographed until his death at 90, in 2009. Weakened by arthritis, he kept on creating while seated. He had arranged in advance, in a “Legacy Plan,” that his company would set off on a worldwide farewell tour before disbanding, a rare decision in the world of dance.
Primary Sources
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.
Dance provides something — an amplification of energy — that nothing else provides. Choreographing is less about ordering steps than about staying open to what arises.
With John Cage, we decided that music and dance could be independent of each other while occupying the same span of time. Each exists on its own, and they simply coincide in duration.
Key Places
Town in the northwestern United States where Merce Cunningham was born in 1919. There he took his first dance lessons from a local teacher.
Art school in Seattle where Cunningham trained in dance and theater in the late 1930s. There he met John Cage, then an accompanist.
Experimental college for artists where Cunningham founded his company in 1953 and took part in the first “happening.” A hotbed of the American avant-garde.
A former industrial complex converted into housing and artists' studios, where the Merce Cunningham Dance Company set up its studio starting in 1971.
Artistic capital where Cunningham lived and created most of his work, and where he died in 2009.