rip merce cunningham

Merce Cunningham, the American choreographer who was among a handful of 20th-century figures to make dance a major art and a major form of theater, died Sunday night [July 26th]. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Cunningham ranks with Isadora Duncan, Serge Diaghilev, Martha Graham and George Balanchine in making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography, posing a series of “But” and “What if?” questions over a career of nearly seven decades.

He went on doing so almost to the last. Until 1989, when he reached the age of 70, he appeared in every single performance given by his company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company; in 1999, at 80, though frail and holding onto a barre, he danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater. And in 2009, even after observing his 90th birthday with the world premiere of the 90-minute “Nearly Ninety,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music he went on choreographing for his dancers, telling people as they went to say farewell to him that he was still creating dances in his head.

In his final years he became almost routinely hailed as the world’s greatest choreographer. For many, he had simply been the greatest living artist since Samuel Beckett.[via]

During my sophomore year I was fortunate enough to take a practice-based course on movement and the experience of “what is your body” in time and space. These lessons each drew from prior readings and concepts to be explored, and among those names Merce Cunningham was one of the most influential as my professor was a student and remained a close friend. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is still scheduled to perform three free shows in NYC’s Rockefeller Park on August 1 and 2 and assuming that these continue there should be some sort of mass public tribute because in Cunningham fashion, why do the performers need to be the folks dressed up on stage?

Daniel Johnston – Story Of An Artist