Background
Cunningham was born on April 16, 1919, in Centralia, Washington, United States.
Cunningham was born on April 16, 1919, in Centralia, Washington, United States.
There, as a boy, he studied tap, folk, and ballroom dancing. He attended George Washington University and Seattle's Cornish School of Allied Arts. In 1939, while studying modern dance at Bennington College in Vermont, he was invited by Martha Graham to join her dance company as a soloist. From 1940 to 1945 he danced with her group, studied classical ballet at George Balanchine's American School of Ballet, and began performing his own choreography in solo recitals, in which he collaborated with the pianist and composer John Cage.
Cunningham pioneered in "objective" dance; that is, dance emphasizing movements and gestures for their own sake. In his choreography, Cunningham does not rely on dramatic plot, literary allusion, social theme, or expression of emotions to give a dance meaning, nor does he use the dance form as an expression of the rhythms and melodies of music.
From 1947 through 1953 Cunningham was an artist-in-residence at Black Mountain College, N.C., where he met some of the artists and musicians with whom he was later to work. He formed his first dance company in 1952 and has, since then, choreographed more than 75 dances.
Like the music of Cage, with whom Cunningham worked until Cage's death in 1992, Cunningham's dance is best known for its nonlinearity--its seeming randomness and lack of continuity. Although it is analogous to music like Cage's, using bursts of action as that music uses points of sound and stopped motion as that music uses silence, it does not depend on the music. Cunningham's dancers often continue moving without a break or change in rhythm although the music has stopped, or, conversely, freeze in a static position while the music continues. Cunningham employs other contrasts as well, as when he juxtaposes a solitary, either unmoving or slowly revolving figure with a group of swirling, frenetically active dancers. Characteristically, the dancers perform disparate movements simultaneously. For example, in Crises the main character's movements are jerky, spasmodic, and fragmented, while those of the other dancers are languid, ebbing and flowing about her. In creating this piece and others, Cunningham used the chance to determine when and how the dancers would relate to one another.
Cunningham has worked closely with many modern artists and musicians to create unique environments, in which his dances are a part of the total design of color, pattern, movement, and sound. Setting the mood for Rainforest, for example, are the eerie electronic music by David Tudor and the silvery, luminescent, transparent mylar pillows designed by Andy Warhol to float slowly and hypnotically around the stage. A row of large fans turned towards the audience produces a strong breeze throughout Tread, separating the audience from the dancers; this "setting" was planned by Bruce Naumann, and the beeping, blurring electronic sound accompanying it was composed by Christian de Wolff. Sets and costumes for many of the other works were designed by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Frank Stella. Wit and humor set the tone for many of Cunningham's dances, as for example, How to Pass, Kick, Run, and Fall, which is narrated by two champagne-swigging commentators, one of whom was often the narrative's author, John Cage. The Cunningham company has performed throughout the world, with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, N.Y.C., as its base. In 1975 James Klosty published Merce Cunningham, a photo-textual commentary on the company.