10 Facts about Merce Cunningham

Post On: November 22, 2018
By: Andi
In: Arts

10 facts about Merce Cunningham will tell the amazing facts about the Merce Cunningham. Mercier Philip “Merce” Cunningham is the full name of Merce Cunningham. He is an American dance that was born on 16th April 1919 until July 26, 2009. You can know more about the amazing facts about him through these descriptions below.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 1: The Annual Year of Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, Wachington in 1919. He is the second from the three sons. While he live in Centralia, he began his first experience in dancing . He took a tap class from a local teacher. He has a big energy to dance from his first teacher named Maude Barret.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 2: The Early Merce Cunningham’s Career Education

In 1937-1939, Merce Cunningham attended the Cornish School in Seattle headed by Nellie Cornish. In In 1939, Cunningham moved to New York and became a soloist dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company for six years. In April 1944, he presented his first solo concert in New York collaborated with  composer John Cage who became his life partner and frequent collabolaotr until Cage’s death in 1992.

the interesting facts about Merce Cunningham

Facts about Merce Cunningham 3: Merce Cunningham Dance Company

In 1953, Cunningham Dance Company was formed at Black Mountain College. The original company included dancers Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip and musicians such as John Cage and David Tudor. The Cunningham Dance Foundation was established to support his work in 1964.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 4: The Collaboration of Artistic Philosophy of Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham Dance Company frequently collaborated with visual artists, designers, and musicians. This company collaborated with the composer John Cage, the visual artists and designers such as Robert Rauschenberg.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 5: The Chance Operations in Artistic Philosophy

Cunningham valued the process of a work over the product. Because of his strong interest in the creation of the choreography he used chance procedures in his work. A chance procedure means that the order of the steps or sequence is unknown until the actual performance and is decided by chance.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 6: The Examples in Works

In 1953, Cunningham made his first work through chance procedures.  Charts were created listing elements such as space, time, and positions.

the interesting facts about Merce Cunningham

Facts about Merce Cunningham 7: The Use of Technology

In the 1970s, he began investigating dance on film in the 1970s, and after 1991 choreographed using the computer program danceforms. He explored motion capture technology with digital atrists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar to create hand-drawn spaces, a three-screen animation that was commisioned by and premiered at SIGGRSPH in 1998.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 8: The Point of View

The “front and centre” spot traditionally coveted by soloist no longer exist in his works. Merce Cunningham’s sees randomness and arbitrariness as positve qualities because theay exist in real life.

Facts about Merce Cunningham 9: The Cunningham’s Exhibition

There are several exhibitions of Cunningham. Such as Merce Cunningham and Collaborators at the New York Public Library for the perfoming Arts closed on October 13, 2007.

the interesting facts about Merce Cunningham

Facts about Merce Cunningham 10: Cunningham’s Works

In his company, Cunningham discovered about more than 200 works, such as Suite for Five, Crises, and Rainforest

What do you feel after you read this article, facts about Merce Cunningham?


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