Merce Cunningham

• Name — Merce Cunningham • Birth Name — Mercier Philip Cunningham • Born — 16 April 1919 • Birthplace — Centralia, Washington, U.S. • Died — 26 July 2009 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — * Dancer • choreographer • Years Active — 1938–2009 • Partner — John Cage • Website — mercecunningham.org • Illustration — Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington, in 1919, the second of three sons. Both of his brothers followed their father, Clifford D. Cunningham, into the legal profession. Cunningham first experienced dance while living in Centralia. He took a tap dance class from a local teacher, Mrs Maude Barrett, whose energy and spirit taught him to love dance. Her emphasis on precise musical timing and rhythm provided him with a clear understanding of musicality that he implemented in his later dance pieces. He attended the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, headed by Nellie Cornish, from 1937 to 1939 to study acting, but found drama's reliance on text and miming too limiting and concrete. Cunningham preferred the ambiguous nature of dance, which gave him an outlet for exploration of movement. During this time, Martha Graham saw Cunningham dance and invited him to join her company. In 1939, Cunningham moved to New York City and danced as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company for six years. He presented his first solo concert in New York in April 1944 with composer John Cage, who became his lifelong romantic 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. Throughout his career, Cunningham choreographed more than 200 dances and over 800 Events, or 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 to determine the sequence of his dances and, often, dancers were not informed of the order 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. In 1968 Cunningham published his book Changes: Notes on Choreography, edited by Francis Starr, containing various sketches of his choreography. A mural, located in Washington Hall on the campus of Centralia College, was created in honor of Cunningham. Cunningham continued to live in New York City and lead his dance company as Artistic Director until his death. He presented his last work, a new work, Nearly Ninety, in April 2009, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, to mark his 90th birthday. Later that year he died in his home at the age of 90.

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, Marianne Preger-Simon, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip, and musicians John Cage and David Tudor. In 1964 the Cunningham Dance Foundation was established to support his work. MCDC made its first international tour in 1964, visiting Europe and Asia. From 1971 until its dissolution in 2012, the company was based in the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village; for a time Cunningham himself lived a block away at 107 Bank Street, with John Cage. On July 20, 1999, Merce Cunningham and Mikhail Baryshnikov performed together at the New York State Theater for Cunningham's 80th birthday. In its later years, the company had 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, with a performance at the Park Avenue Armory.

• Illustration — Still frame from Loops, a digital art collaboration with Cunningham and The OpenEnded Group that interprets Cunningham's motion-captured dance for the hands. Merce Cunningham Dance Company frequently collaborated with visual artists, architects, designers, and musicians. Many of Cunningham's most famous innovations were developed in collaboration with composer John Cage, his life partner. Cunningham and Cage used chance procedures to generate material, discarding many artistic traditions of narrative and form. Famously, they asserted that dance and its music should not be intentionally coordinated with one another. John Cage, after his death, was succeeded in the role of music director by David Tudor. After 1995, MCDC's music director was Takehisa Kosugi. MCDC commissioned more work from contemporary composers than any other dance company. Its repertory included works by musicians ranging from Cage and Gordon Mumma to Gavin Bryars, as well as popular bands like Radiohead, Sigur Rós and Sonic Youth. The company also collaborated with an array of visual artists and designers. Robert Rauschenberg, whose famous "Combines" reflect the approach he used to create décor for several 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.

In Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (1951), Cunningham used Indeterminacy for the first time in this piece; the changing element for each show was the sequence of the sections. In Field Dances (1963), Cunningham experimented with 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 it in any order and as many times as desired. In Story (1963), Cunningham experimented with the variables of costumes and sets. Before each performance dancers chose an outfit from a pile of second-hand clothes picked out by the designer, Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg was also responsible for creating a new set for every show with items he found in the theatre. Suite by Chance (1953) was his first work made entirely through chance procedures. Charts were created listing elements such as space, time, and positions. A coin was then tossed to determine each of these elements. Canfield (1969) was created by using playing cards. Each movement was assigned a playing card and chosen randomly.

Cunningham's lifelong passion for exploration and innovation made him a leader in applying new technologies to the arts. He began investigating dance on film in the 1970s, and after 1991 choreographed using the computer program LifeForms, a software made by Zella Wolofsky, Tom Calvert, and Thecla Schiphorst. 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. Cunningham was one of the first choreographers to begin experimenting with film. He created an original work for the video Westbeth (1974) in collaboration with filmmaker Charles Atlas The computer program later became DanceForms and uses avatars of dancers with color-coded limbs as a platform for choreography. In 2009, Cunningham's interest in new media led to the creation of the behind-the-scenes webcast Mondays with Merce.

The use of stage space also changed in Cunningham's choreography. The "front and centre" spot traditionally coveted by soloists no longer exists in his works. Dance can take place on any part of the stage; it need not even be frontally oriented, but can be viewed from any angle (at performances in Cunningham's studio, for instance, audiences are seated in an L-shaped configuration). The viewer's focus is never directed to a particular spot; he must often decide among many centres of activity. Merce Cunningham saw randomness and arbitrariness as positive qualities because they exist in real life. Most of Cunningham's choreographic process works to break the boundaries of "putting on a show", the removal of centre stage is an example of this—without a focal point for the audience, no one dancer or step holds the most value and can be seen as arbitrary... or not.

There have been numerous exhibitions dedicated to Cunningham's work. Also, his visual art was represented by Margarete Roeder Gallery until her death on December 11, 2023. 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 in North Miami in January 2007. A trio of exhibitions devoted to John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham was curated by Ron Bishop and shown in the spring of 2002 at the Gallery of Fine Art at Edison College in 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 in Porto, Portugal in 1999; the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna in 2000; and at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli in Turin in 2000. Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly is an exhibition focused on their friendship and collaboration in different artistic genres. The exhibit was a collaboration between Museum Brandhorst and Museum Ludwig; it was displayed at the Brandhorst from April 10 to August 17, 2025 and at Ludwig from October 3, 2025 to January 11, 2026. The catalog was published in both English and German.

Cunningham choreographed almost 200 works for his company. • Year(s) — Title — Music — Costumes — Lighting — Decor — Notes — Ref • 1956-1958 — Suite for Five — John Cage's Music for Piano — Robert Rauschenberg — Beverly Emmons • 1960 — Crises — Conlon Nancarrow's Rhythm Studies for Player Piano — Robert Rauschenberg • 1968 — Rainforest — David Tudor — Jasper Johns (uncredited) — Richard Nelson — Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds • 1970 — Second Hand — John Cage's Cheap Imitation — Jasper Johns — Richard Nelson (1970) Christine Shallenberg (2008) — Jasper Johns • 1975 — Sounddance — David Tudor's Toneburst & Untitled (1975/1994) — Mark Lancaster — Mark Lancaster — Mark Lancaster • 1987 — Fabrications — Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta's Short Waves & SBbr — Dove Bradshaw — Josh Johnson — Dove Bradshaw • 1993 — CRWDSPCR — John King's blues 99 — Mark Lancaster — Mark Lancaster — Mark Lancaster • 1994 — Ocean — David Tudor's Soundings: Ocean Diary Andrew Culver's Ocean 1–95 — Marsha Skinner — Marsha Skinner — Marsha Skinner • 1999 — BIPED — Gavin Bryars's Biped — Suzanne Gallo — Aaron Copp — Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar • 2003 — Split Sides — Radiohead & Sigur Rós — James Hall — James F. Ingalls — Robert Heishman, Catherine Yass • 2004 — Views on Stage — John Cage's ASLSP & Music for Two — Josh Johnson — Ernesto Neto, Other Animal • 2006 — eyeSpace — Mikel Rouse's International Cloud Atlas — Henry Samelson — Henry Samelson's Blues Arrive Not Anticipating What Transpires Even Between Themselves • 2007 — David Behrman's Long Throw and/or Annea Lockwood's Jitterbug — Daniel Arsham — Daniel Arsham's ODE/EON • XOVER — John Cage's Aria (1958) & Fontana Mix (1958) — Robert Rauschenberg's Plank — Robert Rauschenberg's Plank • 2009 — Nearly Ninety — John Paul Jones, Takehisa Kosugi, Sonic Youth — Romeo Gigli's io ipse idem — Brian MacDevitt — Benedetta Tagliabue — Video design by Franc Aleu