Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Jacob's Pillow 2009

This is a more recent video clip from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
When I was watching this I enjoyed the idea of adding in dancers to a phrase of movement and allowing it to build up on its own. The movement was very powerful and it wasn't as slow paced and muscularly posed as much of Cunningham's earlier works. He still used his idea of overlapping and collage, which I very much enjoy. This piece was performed at Jacob's Pillow in 2009.

About Merce Cunningham

-Born April 16, 1919

- Died July 26, 2009

-Forefront of American avant garde for more than 50 years.

-One of Americas most widely known dancers and choreographers.

-Born in Centralia, Washington in 1919.

-He was the 2nd of three sons in his family.

-First training in dance was at the Cornish College of Arts in Seattle. Where he attended from age 9 to 20.

-His first performed solo was in New York April of 1944 with composer John Cage.

-John Cage was Cunningham's life partner and frequent collaborator until Cage's death in 1992.

-The summer of 1953 is when the Merce Cunningham Dance Company developed so Cunningham could explore his ideas on dance and the performing arts.

 

The Collage Aesthetic

Cunningham enjoyed using a collage aesthetic within his dances. He believed strongly in the unity of movement and fixed boundaries and enjoyed playing with timing and how bodies can form images with different positions. Collage represents his idea of overlapping  image over image and allowing it to form its own picture within a bunch of others.  Cunningham found that working with abstract body lines offers a lot of mobility and space to play with  his movement and this is why Cunningham's collage theory is what made him stand out among other modern day choreographers.







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Theory of Chance

Cunningham has been questioned multiple times if he has a structure behind his dances...

Using chance is something that Merce believed made his dances more organic and human orientated. Many viewers who have watched performances by Cunningham think that he gave his dancers a coin to toss before they went on stage and used that to improvise there performances. However, this is not the case. Cunningham still has a structure and likes to hold order like many other choreographers did, he just finds that when using chance in the choreographing process he can put movement in order without thinking into it. This allows the movement to flow into its own master piece and relays a different message all the time. Cunningham enjoys choreographing his movement to that of which a pedestrian could understand. Many question if there is any story behind his pieces and most of the time there isn't. Using chance allows the audience to build their own stories to play out in their minds and also helps create the pieces own drama.

Merce Cunningham--Beach Birds 1

This piece is one of Cunningham's most popular pieces. Connected to his other work "Ocean", Cunningham was inspired for these pieces by the work of James Joyce who was an author whose next book was going to be titled "Ocean". This authors writing really influenced Cunningham. The dance shifts from black and white to colored film. There is also much combination and recombination of dancers. Cunningham enjoyed having a lot of interplay between the dancers bodies and lines, not only there actual bodies but there costumes too.

Photos of Merce Cunningham

  

Mondays with Merce - The Demo

This is a video clip of rehearsals, warm-ups and performances done by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This video has shots of various pieces in different venues.