Merce Cunningham, seen here in September 1955, founded Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Black Mountain College in 1953, which included Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip among its dancers.
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Cunningham, in 1957, with a dance partner. Although renowned for his modern choreography, Cunningham was equally well known for being a dancer in his own company until 1992.
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Cunningham and Carolyn Brown, a founding member of his company, during rehearsal in July 1964, in London. Brown danced for Cunningham for 20 years and performed in 40 of his own works.
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Cunningham in Paris at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in November 1966. A longtime New Yorker, Cunningham frequently took works around the world and was awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Laurence Olivier Awards in London, and an Officer of the Legion of Honor in France.
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In 1977, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, James Taylor, and Carly Simon attended Cunningham’s Broadway premiere at New York’s Minskoff Theater. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company frequently collaborated with artists, architects, designers, and musicians, opening up the world of modern dance to a variety of disciplines and new fans.
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Composer, poet, and artist John Cage first collaborated with Cunningham in 1944, and the two became life partners and innovators at the dance company, where Cage was the musical adviser, until his death in 1992. The duo proposed a unique combination of music and dance, in which the two occur at the same time but are made individually.
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Mikhail Baryshnikov performing Cunningham’s Signals in preparation of his own project, the White Oak Dance Project troupe.
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A performance of Pictures at the City Center in New York, March 9, 1984. Cunningham won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production for Pictures in 1985.
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Ronald and Nancy Reagan salute Cunningham (far left), Bob Hope and four other significant cultural performers, who received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors in 1985 for their lifetime achievements.
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Cunningham second from right, performs in Quartet with his company in August 1986. The piece utilized five dancers, and reviewers singled out Cunningham as symbolizing the eternal outsider—a role unfounded in his constant collaborations with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman.
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On April 16, 2009, three months before he died, Cunningham was honored at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the debut of his most recent work Nearly Ninety. Shortly before his death, Cunningham ensured the legacy of his works will continue through a trust he created, although his famed dance company will disband after a farewell tour.
Zach Hyman, PatrickMcMullan.com / Sipa Press
