Merce Cunningham, considered the most
influential choreographer of the 20th century, 
was a many sided artist.
He was a dance maker, a fierce collaborator,
a chance taker, a boundless innovator,
a film producer, and a teacher.
During his 70 years of creative practice,
Cunningham's explorations forever changed
the landscape of dance, music,
and contemporary art.
Even at an early age, Merce Cunningham delighted
audiences with his physical and expressive
abilities and his compelling stage presence.
He had a deep well of energy for performing,
a passion that would develop into an unparalleled
and prolific career as a choreographer.
Cunningham started his own dance company in 1953
and created hundreds of unique choreographic works.
Defined by precision and complexity, Cunningham's
dances combined intense physicality
with intellectual rigor.
He challenged traditional ideas of dance,
such as the roles of the dancer and the audience,
the limitations of the stage, and the relationships
between movement and beauty.
Cunningham's embrace of an expanded possibility
of dance, music, and visual art reads like
a how-to guide for pushing the boundaries
of culture for subsequent generations.
In the 1940s, Merce Cunningham and his life
partner, composer John Cage, developed a radical
new concept: music and dance could exist
independently within the same performance.
The dancers' movements would no longer be
tied to the rhythms, mood, and structure of music.
Instead, all forms of art could stand alone,
simply sharing a common space and time.
This idea would become a cornerstone of Cunningham's
artistic practice and frame his collaborations
with a range of visual artists, composers,
filmmakers, dancers, and designers, whom he
brought together in this generous spirit and
encouraged to experiment and create.
One of Merce Cunningham's most influential
strategies was his use of chance and randomness
as a creative tool.
Cunningham would often flip coins, roll dice,
or even consult the I-Ching to guide the way
he structured his choreography.
This strategy, also favored by John Cage,
challenged traditional notions of storytelling in dance.
Cunningham described randomness as a way to
free his imagination from its own cliches,
counterbalancing his own rigorous creative
process with unexpected moments of wonder.
Throughout his career, Merce Cunningham embraced
technology in his work, from early experiments
with television and video to the use of computers,
body sensors, and motion-capture technology.
These tools allowed him to sculpt, animate,
and choreograph dance in entirely new ways,
and reimagine his understanding
of the human body.
In the 1990s, Cunningham pioneered the use
of the computer as a choreographic tool.
The software DanceForms could model and animate
the human form, allowing Cunningham to visualize
sequences and phrases of dance on screen,
which he would then translate to a dancer's body.
"It expands what we think we can do,"
Cunningham commented about this process.
"I think normally the mind gets in the way
and says, You can't do that."
In the 1970s and 80s, Cunningham became interested
in creating dance works specifically to be
filmed by a camera.
Along with filmmakers Charles Atlas and Elliot
Caplan, he developed imaginative new ways
to capture and present the medium of dance
through moving image.
At the core of this strategy was the repositioning
of the camera as a key part of the choreography,
rather than a mere witness to the action.
Through video, Cunningham could change perspective,
move the camera through the studio, focus
on unusual details, adjust scale and tempo,
interweave scenes, and surround the viewing
audience with movement.
Utilizing unusual editing techniques and image
manipulation, Cunningham and his collaborators
invented a new genre of dance expression,
continually pushing its practice
in unexpected directions.
Multiple generations of dancers learned their
craft from Merce Cunningham, often through
classes he led in his New York studio.
His rigorous and physically exacting technique
explored, among other things, the idea of
individual body parts operating
independently of each other.
His philosophical teachings were just as influential.
He taught his dancers to question commonly
held assumptions about dance and the arts,
inspiring legions of students through his
commitment to experimentation and risk-taking.
And many with whom he worked
would go on to become
choreographic innovators in their own right.[
One of the most fearless, inspired artists
of our times, Merce Cunningham's career
was defined by discovery.
Across seven decades, he reshaped dance into
a new kind of art form, deeply influencing
visual art, film, and music along the way.
His ideas, artistry, and discipline continue
to resonate with artists worldwide.
Thanks to Cunningham and his collaborators,
we live in a time of electrifying artistic
convergence, a place where rigor and freedom
can coexist in a common time.
