Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham (Centralia, WA) received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle. From 1939 to 1945, he was a soloist in Martha Graham’s company. He presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage in April 1944. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company was formed at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1953. Since then Cunningham has choreographed nearly 200 works for his company. His dances have been presented by the New York City Ballet, the Ballet of the Paris Opéra, the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Zurich Ballet, and the Rambert Dance Company (London), among others.

Since the 1970s, Cunningham has choreographed a number of video- and filmdances in collaboration with Charles Atlas and Elliot Caplan. Together with Atlas he produced the documentary Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance 1998), shown on BBC2 and PBS’s American Masters, as well as a new filmdance, Views for Video (2004).

Cunningham’s interest in contemporary technology led him to DanceForms, a computer program that he has used in making all his dances since Trackers (1991). In 1997 he began work in motion capture with Riverbed Media to develop the décor for BIPED (1999), with music by Gavin Bryars. Another major work, Interscape (2000), with music by John Cage, reunited Cunningham with Robert Rauschenberg, who designed both décor and costumes.

Cunningham’s numerous awards include the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2000), the Handel Medallion from the mayor of New York City (1999), the Nellie Cornish Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater (1996), the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (1995), the 1993 Wexner Prize of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University (with John Cage, posthumously), and the National Medal of Arts (1990). In 1985 Cunningham was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, a Laurence Olivier Award in London, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In France, he was made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (1982) and Officer of the French Legion of Honor (2003). In 2002, he received the Arts and Business Council Kitty Carlisle Hart Award and in 2003, the Edward MacDowell Medal in Interdisciplinary Art from the illustrious MacDowell Colony, the oldest artists’ colony in the United States.

Cunningham has collaborated on two books about his work: Changes: Notes on Choreography, with Frances Starr (1968), and The Dancer and the Dance, interviews with Jacqueline Lesschaeve (1985). The latter, originally published in French, has been translated into German and Italian. Other books about Cunningham include Merce Cunningham/Dancing in Space and Time, a collection of critical essays edited by Richard Kostelanetz (1998, 2nd ed.), and Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years, chronicle and commentary by David Vaughan, archivist of the Cunningham Dance Foundation (1997). In 2002, Aperture published a book of Cunningham’s drawings and journals, entitled Other Animals: Drawings and Journals by Merce Cunningham.

In 2001 Cunningham returned to the stage in the first theatrical presentations of John Cage’s An Alphabet, at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, with subsequent engagements in Germany, Illinois, California, and Western Australia. In the 2002 revival of How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run (1965), Cunningham read the accompanying stories by John Cage (originally performed by Cage), together with David Vaughan.

Learn more: An overview of Cunningham's life and work.>>

Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) was formed in 1953, when Merce Cunningham took a group of dancers who had been working with him in New York to Black Mountain College, the progressive liberal arts school near Asheville, North Carolina. The dancers included Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Remy Charlip, and Paul Taylor. John Cage was music director and David Tudor was the company musician. John Cage’s association with the company continued until his death in August 1992, when David Tudor succeeded him as music director. (Tudor died in August 1996.) In 1995, Takehisa Kosugi was appointed music director.

The company’s six-month world tour in 1964 was a turning point, as critics and audiences alike recognized the importance of the work of Cunningham, Cage, and their associates. From then on, extended domestic tours and New York seasons became part of the annual schedule, as well as trips abroad.

From 1954 to 1964, renowned artist Robert Rauschenberg was the company’s resident designer. The following decade saw a number of celebrated collaborations with visual artists such as Jasper Johns (appointed artistic adviser in 1967), Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Robert Morris. Mark Lancaster succeeded Johns as artistic adviser in 1980 and was in turn succeeded by William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw in 1984.

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 2003 culminated in the presentation of a new work, Split Sides, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, the Paris Autumn Festival, and a series of Events at the Tate Modern in London. International touring in 2004, marking the 40th anniversary of the first world tour, included South Korea and Hong Kong; Bergen, Norway; and three cities in Brazil. In the fall of 2004, the company performed in the Fall for Dance Festival at New York’s City Center and at the Barbican Centre in London. A tour of six British cities followed—the company’s first such tour—ending in Edinburgh, where the stage version of the new filmdance Views on Stage had its world premiere. The year ended with a week of events at the Joyce Theater in New York.

In January 2005, the company returned to the Paris Opéra for a week of performances, followed by a tour of France, Belgium, and Italy. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company appears at Stanford for the first time in a week of residency including two performances at which Split Sides and Views on Stage receive their West Coast and North American premieres, respectively.

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Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation