Background
Merce Cunningham 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.
(On December 29,30 and 31, 2011, the Merce Cunningham Danc...)
On December 29,30 and 31, 2011, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company returned to New York City after the final company tour before its disbanding , to present six valedictory performances at the Park Avenue Armory. Performed across three stages, Park Avenue Armory Event was the culmination of nearly 60 years of cross disciplinary innovation. The company had completed its international Legacy Tour. This 3 dvd set is designed to give viewers the chance to see this historic performance as an edited film (Disc 1) and as three separate performances from each stage in its entirety (Disc 2) along with excerpts from the repertory works featured on the Legacy Tour (Disc 3). There are program notes for each stage and a illustrated essay by the noted curator and critic, Douglas Crimp.
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Merce Cunningham 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.
As a boy, he studied tap, folk, and ballroom dancing. 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.
While pursuing his formal dance and theatre training, he also attended the Mills College and learnt from Lester Horton, a famous dancer and choreographer.
He also 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’.
In 1939, he began his career as a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He spent several years with the group and performed as the central character in various productions including ‘El Penitente’ (1939) and ‘Appalachian Spring’ (1944).
Alongside, he also started working as a choreographer and produced some of his early works such as ‘Root of an Unfocus’ (1944) and ‘Mysterious Adventure’ (1945).
In 1945, he left the company and began his solo career as a choreographer in collaboration with other artists including John Cage. The duo collaborated on a number of works such as ‘The Seasons’ (1947) and ‘Inlets’ (1978).
Gradually he developed his own style of choreography known as “choreography by chance, ” a technique in which selected isolated movements are assigned in a sequential manner by random methods such as ‘tossing a coin’.
In 1953, while serving as a professor at the Black Mountain College, he established the ‘Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC)’. It included dancers such as Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip along with musicians including John Cage and David Tudor.
The company was a success; its performances dazzled the audience with its creative choreography. In 1964, the company made its first international tour and he received immense appreciation from all around the world for the avant-garde works.
In early 1990s, he started using a computer animation program, DanceForms, to conduct choreography. He continued leading his dance company until shortly before his own death. The company went on a two-year tour after his death as a tribute and was finally closed in 2012.
Throughout his career, he choreographed some astonishing dance performances including ‘Suite for Five’ (1956–1958), ‘Crises’ (1960), ‘Sounddance’ (1975), ‘Fabrications’ (1987), ‘Ocean’ (1994), ‘Split Sides’ (2003), ‘Views on Stage’ (2004) and his last one, ‘Nearly Ninety’ (2009).
On July 26, 2009, he died peacefully at the age of 90, in his home in New York City.
He was a dancer, choreographer, and a leader of the avant-garde in the arts since the 1950's. 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. Instead he relies exclusively on variations in the tempo, modes, and spatial patterns of movement; the substance and meaning of the dance consist in his experiments with the various possibilities of movement in space and time.
In 2004, he was named Officier of the Légion d'honneur in France.
In 1966, he was presented a ‘Gold Medal for Choreographic Invention’ at the Fourth International Festival of Dance, Paris.
In 1972, he received the ‘Belgrade International Theatre Festival Award’ in one of the most significant cultural festivals of Serbia.
In 1985, he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors and a MacArthur Fellowship.
In 1954 and 1959, he received Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York.
In 1999, he was honored with the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement, San Francisco.
In 2000, he was conferred ‘The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize’ and was named a ‘Living Legend’ by the Library of Congress, Washington DC.
In 2009, he was awarded the prestigious ‘Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award’ and the ‘Skowhegan Medal for Performance’.
(On December 29,30 and 31, 2011, the Merce Cunningham Danc...)
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. "
"I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving. "
He was inducted as an Honorary Member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York NY.
Merce Cunningham tends to be quite adaptable, and he finds it easy to fit into most social set ups and vocational fields.
There are no particular virtues that can cause an imbalance in Merce's personality and life, but he has to work hard and persistently to develop those special strengths that he desires to attain.
Learning to be wisely assertive is a major lesson to be taken by Merce Cunningham throughout his life.
While working at the firm of Martha Graham, he met composer John Cage, who later became his life partner and frequent collaborator.
