Choreographer Merce Cunningham dies
Updated on 28 July 2009
US choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, credited by many with revolutionizing visual and performing arts, has died at age 90. He gave one of his last interviews to Nicholas Glass.
Cunningham, whose long-time partner was the late composer John Cage, died peacefully at his Manhattan home on Sunday of natural causes, the Cunningham Dance Foundation and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company said in a statement on Monday.
Merce Cunningham, the avant-garde dancer and choreographer who revolutionised modern dance by creating works of pure movement divorced from storytelling and even from their musical accompaniment.
In a career that spanned more than 60 years and some 150 works, Cunningham wiped out storytelling in dance, tossed coins or dice to determine steps, and shattered such unwritten rules as having dancers usually face the audience.
He worked closely with composer John Cage, his long-time partner who died in 1992, and with visual artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Unlike his one time mentor, Martha Graham, he did not intend his dances to expression emotion or act out a drama.
Other choreographers have made plotless dances but Cunningham did his even without music. The audience got both dance and music, but the steps weren't done to the music's beat, and sometimes the dancers were hearing the music for the first time on stage.
Cunningham also used chance - for example tossing pennies - to determine such things as which of several sets of steps would follow another series of steps. Once the toss determined the steps, however, the dancers had to follow them precisely.
Though he had to use a wheelchair in later years, he remained an active artist. As he turned 90 in April 2009, he premiered a long piece called "Nearly Ninety," set to new music from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the rock band Sonic Youth, and Japanese composer Takehisa Kosugi.
He also set up a new organisation, the Merce Cunningham Trust, to maintain his legacy into the future. Under the plan, his dance company would have a final, two-year tour and then shut down.
Its assets would be transferred to the trust, which would hold licensing rights and preserve Cunningham's choreography in digital form for future artists, students, scholars and audiences.
Among the honours that came Cunningham's way over a long career were the Kennedy Centre Honours, 1985, and the National Medal of Arts, 1990.
