The late Merce Cunningham was ferocious about protecting his dry, acerbic, difficult, complicated and often downright incomprehensible work. Now his greatest challenge lies ahead— namely, can a choreographer preserve his vision from the grave? 

Merce Cunningham confronts the future
(from the grave)

The giant pendulum of time took a huge swing last month when Merce Cunningham died at age 90 on July 26. Contemporary dance lost the last of its historic pioneers—the handful of determined, idiosyncratic talents who carved out the discipline of modern dance in an era suspicious of stage dancing of all kinds and disinclined to view any of it as an art form. Now these giants— Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman and Merce— are all gone.

Ironically Cunningham’s quiet death came just shortly after he premiered a major new work, Nearly Ninety, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with experimental music composed by John Paul Jones, Takehisa Kosugi (Cunningham’s company music director) and Sonic Youth. Merce’s long-time collaborator and partner, the musician John Cage, had died in 1992. The April 16 premiere marked the 90th birthday of a choreographer still very much in command of his talents. 

An Internet presence too

While assembling this celebration of his longevity, Cunningham also was establishing an Internet opportunity for dancers anywhere in the world to take his daily company class. “Mondays with Merce,” he called it, inviting any dancer in the world to go online and follow along with the class wherever they were. Even at 90, this deceptive shy and gracious elf of a man wasn’t putting his feet up and reminiscing. 

Cunningham didn’t work in a linear manner. His dances combined bits and pieces performed to music selected at the last moment, often by the toss of coin. He didn’t choreograph movement to music; he choreographed movement and then found some instrumental accompaniment. The dancers knew what movement phrases they were to perform, but musical accompaniment changed. Cunningham liked to use what one critic called “noise” as background.

Preservation on videotape

Toward the end of his life, Merce became intensely preoccupied with preserving all of his dances on videotape. He was interested in chance and abstraction, yes, but not in taking a chance that his lifelong work would disappear or, worse, suffer corruption by others after he was gone. To avoid terrible court battles and ill will that ensued after Martha Graham’s death, he formed the Cunningham Dance Foundation Legacy Plan, basing it on the Balanchine Trust, which has protected the work of ballet’s great genius.

Cunningham’s Legacy Plan stipulates that after his death the troupe would tour for one full year and then shut down and disband. The school, which has been such a fertile training ground for dancers of every ilk (including names like Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor), would close as well. All assets, including licensing rights to the dances and valuable original sets (created by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns), would be transferred to the Cunningham Trust. 

Audiences were baffled

Merce was ferocious about protecting his dry, acerbic, difficult, complicated and often downright incomprehensible work. Audiences were often baffled by his work: I can attest from long experience that there was never a Cunningham performance where some bored audience members didn’t walk out.

But every experimental dancer owes something to Merce’s genius. Any time you see an experimental dancer working with technology, you’re seeing Merce. It was Cunningham who sat onstage while a TV set played and called it dance. He did it all, walking instead of dancing, talking, performing with his back to the audience, just stopping and leaving the stage.

His parents were perplexed

Merce took what his work seriously, but didn’t take himself seriously. He was kind, and his dancers worshipped him. At the conclusion of the Nearly Ninety opening night performance, Merce was wheeled onstage. He told a charming story about himself as a youth in Centralia, Washington, yearning for a career in dance. His family wasn’t so much opposed as perplexed by this odd choice. One night Merce overheard his father telling his mother that they’d better let him have his way or he might “end up a crook.”

Cunningham’s dancers and colleagues will be in mourning long after they fulfill his Legacy Plan and then begin the task of sustaining Merce’s work out as he would have wanted. Engaged in a serious artistic endeavor, celebrating his company’s talent, Merce couldn’t have choreographed his own exit better.♦


To read another tribute to Merce Cunningham by Merilyn Jackson, click here.