Merce Cunningham

The American Merce Cunningham (born 1919) was a solo dancer of commanding presence, a controversial choreographer, an influential teacher, and an organizer of an internationally acclaimed avant-garde dance company.

Born in Centralia, Washington, on April 19, 1919, Merce Cunningham studied modern dance under Bonnie Bird in Seattle. Here he met the composer John Cage. 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.

Cunningham's awards include honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1984), the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime contributions to dance (1982), the MacArthur Award (1985), the Laurence Olivier Award (1985), the National Medal of Arts (1990) and the Digital Dance Premier Award (1990).

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.

Further Reading

Cunningham's partly autobiographical Changes (1968) mainly relates his ideas on dance. Pictures of his company's work are in Jack Mitchell, Dance Scene U.S.A. (1967), with commentary by Clive Barnes. Walter Sorell, ed., The Dance Has Many Faces (1951; 2d ed. 1966), includes good essays on modern dance and Cunningham's place in it. Cunningham was also featured in a public television broadcast of Point in Space (BBC, 1986). □

Merce Cunningham (Mercier Philip Cunningham), 1919–2009, American modern dancer and choreographer, b. Centralia, Wash. Cunningham studied modern dance with Martha Graham and ballet at George Balanchine 's School of American Ballet. A superb dancer, long-bodied, long-necked, and lean with an amazing ability to jump, he was a soloist in Graham's company from 1940 to 1955. He presented his first work in 1942 and formed his own company in 1953, beginning to create innovative dances to the music of avant-garde composers, including his life partner and musical director John Cage . His best-known early works include Suite by Chance and Symphonie pour un homme seul (both 1952), which reveal his spare, expressive style. His usually plotless works are composed of abrupt changes and suspensions of motion, some performed by autonomously moving dancers in chance sequence. They often occur in a decentralized stage space where dance movement and music both coexist and are independent of one another.

Cunningham was especially known for his collaborations with American artists, including Andy Warhol , Robert Rauschenberg , and Jasper Johns , who created sets and costumes that were integral parts of his productions. One of the most prolific of dance-makers, he created nearly 200 works for his company, appearing in all of them until he reached the age of 70 and dancing in many new works thereafter. During his later years Cunningham was widely considered the world's greatest living choreographer. Later dances include Locale and Duets (both 1980); Fabrications (1987); Trackers (1991), the first work he created with the aid of a computer; Crwdspcr (1994); Installations (1996); Scenario (1997); Biped (1999), which uses motion-capture technology; Way Station (2001); Split Sides (2003), with music by the experimental rock bands Radiohead and Sigur Ros; Xover (2007); and Nearly Ninety (2009). His company continued to perform his works through 2011; it then disbanded.

Bibliography: See his Changes: Notes on Choreography (1968) and The Dancer and Dance (1985); C. Brown, Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (2007); biography by D. Vaughan (1997); studies by J. Klosty (1975, repr. 1986), R. Kostelanetz, ed. (1992), G. Celant, ed. (1999), and R. Copeland (2004); C. Atlas, dir, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance (documentary film, 2002).

Cunningham, Merce (1919– ) US modern dancer and choreographer. In 1952, he formed the much-acclaimed Merce Cunningham Dance Company. His productions are highly experimental and controversial and include Antic Meet (1958) and How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run (1965).

Cunningham, Merce. See RAUSCHENBERG.