Background
He was born on April 16, 1919 in Centralia, Washington to Clifford D. Cunningham, a law professional, and his wife, Mayme Cunningham. He was the second of their three sons.
( Leading dance innovator Merce Cunningham not only descr...)
Leading dance innovator Merce Cunningham not only describes his development as a dancer and choreographer, but also discusses individual compositionsincluding Torse, Inlets and Squaregamerevealing a great deal about his collaborations with such modern masters as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, Jasper Johns and Morris Graves.
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He was born on April 16, 1919 in Centralia, Washington to Clifford D. Cunningham, a law professional, and his wife, Mayme Cunningham. He was the second of their three sons.
After completing high school, he enrolled at the George Washington University which he left after a year. In 1937, he joined the Cornish School of Fine Arts in Seattle which he attended for two years.
He received several honorary degrees from prestigious universities such as the ‘Wesleyan University’, ‘University of Minnesota’, ‘Cornish College of the Arts’ and the ‘Edith Cowan University’.
From 1940 to 1945 Cunningham was a soloist with the Martha Graham Company, creating such roles as the Christ Figure in El Penitente, the Acrobat in Every Soul Is a Circus, March in Letter to the World, and the Revivalist in Appalachian Spring.
While still with the Graham Company, Cunningham began independent work, at first in solo concerts. His first important large creation was The Seasons (1947), with music by Cage. For the next quarter century, Cage acted as Cunningham's chief composer and musical adviser.
Cunningham's first substantial success came in 1952 (also the year he formed his own company-school) with his setting of Igor Stravinsky's "dance episodes with song, " Les Noces. He continued working with music by experimentalist composers such as Erik Satie, Pierre Schaeffer, and Alan Hovhaness, as well as with Cage. Cunningham also danced to sounds produced solely by his own voice: grunts, shrieks, squeals, and howls.
Cunningham's personal dance style, reflected in his choreography, was usually athletic in forcefulness. But he could also effect a slow, nearly suspended motion which, when opposed sharply to the cross rhythms of accompaniments—either musical, or antimusical—produced unique effects. Cunningham never used such "tricks" as facial expressions to reach an audience, relying solely upon pure body movement to produce effects.
Cunningham experimented with Cage and others of futuristic thought from fields of dance, music, theater, visual arts, and even the technical sciences in combining abstract dance elements with musique concrète, electronic music, random sounds, lighting effects, action films or photo slides superimposed upon or backlighting stage action, pure noise, and even silence. But, though he worked frequently with "chance" methods, Cunningham remained a deadly serious creator who never really left anything to uncertainty. For example, in the late 1960s he worked on dances using body-attached cybersonic consoles which could increase, reduce, distort, unbalance, and then rebalance sounds by stage movements, according to the dimensions of different spatial areas; and on the control of stage lighting as affected by the dancers moving within range of electronic devices that changed hues and densities of illuminations.
In 1958 Cunningham's company began tours which took them to nearly every continent. Cunningham gave lecture-demonstrations or participated in symposiums at universities and museums around the world. By 1970 he had created nearly 100 ensemble dance works and dozens of solos for himself, had made significant documentary films on modern dance, and had authored a book.
Ocean, the final collaboration between Cunningham and John Cage, premiered at the University of California, Berkeley in April, 1996. In 1995, Cunningham developed a computer software program called Life Forms, to choreograph dances on computer.
( Leading dance innovator Merce Cunningham not only descr...)
Quotations:
"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 fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls . "
"There's no thinking involved in my choreography. .. I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body. .. If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing. "
"The only way to do it is to do it. "
"I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving. "
"Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form. "
In 1954 and 1959, he received Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York.
In 1984 he was inducted as an Honorary Member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York NY
In 1985, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Quotes from others about the person
"Merce [Cunningham] is my favorit artist in any field. Sometimes I’m pleased by the complexity of a work I paint. By the fourth day I realize it’s simple. Nothing Merce does [choreography for dance] is simple. Everything has a fascinating richness and multiplicity of direction. [Jasper Johns did a lot of décors for Merce Cunningham, as Robert Rauschenberg did and Frank Stella. .. "
Jasper Johns, in Merce, Hubert Saal, Newsweek 71, no. 22, 27 May 1968, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 129
"I met him [Merce Cunningham] around 1953 after a performance I saw. He was teaching and making dances for his company and was already working with John Cage. What interested me initially wasn’t just the movement but also the music he worked with, which was unfamiliar to me. . . .Later [[Robert Rauschenberg|Bob Rauschenberg] had been doing sets and costumes for the Cunningham Company. . . I can’t say exactly how, but for a period of time, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and I saw each other frequently and exchanged ideas. John [Cage] was very interested in presenting his ideas to other people, so it was impossible to be around and not to learn. ."
Jasper Johns, as quoted in Jasper Johns, by Bryan Robertson and Tim Marlow, Tate, in 'The Art Magazine', London, Winter 1993, pp. 40, 47
While working at the firm of Martha Graham, he met composer John Cage, who later became his life partner and frequent collaborator.