Born: Centralia, Washington 1919
Died: July, 2009
Merce Cunningham is an American modern dancer and choreographer who has greatly influenced the modern style of dance. His curiosity about the pure mechanics of movement and how the audience percieved dance allowed him to create his own unique style of movement. Cunningham created his own dance company and continued to change the way an audience interprets dance.
Died: July, 2009
Merce Cunningham is an American modern dancer and choreographer who has greatly influenced the modern style of dance. His curiosity about the pure mechanics of movement and how the audience percieved dance allowed him to create his own unique style of movement. Cunningham created his own dance company and continued to change the way an audience interprets dance.
Merce Cunningham recieved his first formal training in dance at the Cornish School of Performing and Visual Arts in Seatle Washington. It was at this school where he learned the Martha Grham style of dance. He performed on front of Martha Graham and was asked to join the Martha Graham Dance Company by Graham herself. Cunningham danced in her company as a soloist from 1939-1945. Cunningahm developed his dancning skills here but also started to question the mechanics of modern dance and Graham's emotional aspect of her work. Cunningham's curiosity led him to compose his first works in the 1940s using his own unique style of dance.
Cunningham presented his first work in 1942, presenting the idea of the movement and the music coexisting, but both being independent of each other. He used abrupt changes in his dances and isolated movements. In 1953 Cunningham created his own dance company. He was not interested in telling stories in his dances, "Dancers are not pretending to be anything but themselves..." but rlied on the movement in his dances to reach the audience. Cunningham also used a "chance" method of choreography, these chance methods would determine how to sequence the dance, how many dancers would perform on stage and where they would enter or exit the stage from.
“If a dancer dances – which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance – but if the dancer dances, everything is there. . . Our ecstasy in dance comes from the possible gift of freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing of the bare energy can give us. What is meant is not license, but freedom. . .” - Merce Cunningham
Along with his abrupt changes and unique movements, Cunningham became known for his collaborations with American artists such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. When Cunningham worked with these artists, they would create the costumes and the sets for his dance productions. Along with artists, Cunningham collaborated with avant-garde composers including his life partner and composer, John Cage. Merce Cunningham created almost 200 works for his dance company and appeared in all of them until he reached 70 years old and even after appeared in several new dance pieces. Merce Cunningham died in July of 2009 at the age of 90, and is still considered one of the world's greatest choreographers today.
"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 single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls." -Merce Cunningham