Merce Cunningham R.I.P
(photo by Annie Leibovitz)
Merce Cunningham( April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009)
Goodbye Merce and thank you.
About Merce and Merce org. here.
Three clips from Ubuweb including one with John Cage and Nam June Paik.
Perfect Balance Memoir of Cage/Cunningham by Carolyn Browns
For all of her devotion to and love of Cunningham, Brown reveals that of the famed duo, Cunningham was the difficult one, a man often lost within himself, at times almost reclusive, failing to explain his decisions….
Cage, on the other hand, comes across as a generous spirit throughout, a man who loved games, eating (his mushroom-hunting expeditions are renowned), and, most of all, talking. The gregarious Cage, traveling in the early days with the company, was responsible, so Brown suggests, for the feeling that they were, in fact, a company, for the sense of group spirit. Like a loving mother, Cage is always there to help Cunningham get through the ordeals of travel and the horrible pain the body of any dancer must endure.
Cage is presented as a joyful being, seeking everyone’s happiness. Brown writes:
Obit from artbeat blogs NYtimes.
Merce Cunningham, the American choreographer who was among a handful of 20th-century figures to make dance a major art and a major form of theater, died Sunday night. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Cunningham ranks with Isadora Duncan, Serge Diaghilev, Martha Graham and George Balanchine in making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography, posing a series of “But” and “What if?” questions over a career of nearly seven decades.