Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Cunningham formed Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) at Black Mountain College in 1953. Guided by its leader's radical approach to space, time and technology, the Company has forged a distinctive style, reflecting Cunningham’s technique and illuminating the near limitless possibility for human movement.
The original Company included dancers Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip, and musicians John Cage and David Tudor.
In its early years, MCDC toured in a Volkswagen bus driven by John Cage with just enough room for six dancers, the two musicians, and a stage manager, who was often Robert Rauschenberg. MCDC’s first international tour in 1964—which included performances in Western and Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, and Japan—solidified a constant stream of national and international bookings. In the years since, MCDC has continued to tour the world to critical and popular acclaim, serving as an ambassador for contemporary American culture.
Recent performances and projects include a two-year residency at Dia:Beacon, where MCDC performed Events, Cunningham’s site-specific choreographic collages, in the galleries of Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt among others. In 2007, MCDC premiered XOVER, Cunningham’s final collaboration with Rauschenberg, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In 2009, MCDC premiered Cunningham’s newest work, Nearly Ninety, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Company concluded its farewell tour on December 31, 2011.
Final Performance:
Park Avenue Armory Events (2011)
Arranged by: Robert Swinston
Music: David Behrman, John King, Takehisa Kosugi and Christian Wolff
Décor: Daniel Arsham
Costumes: Anna Finke
Lighting: Christine Shallenberg
Sound design: Jesse Stiles
Read more about this topic: Ballets By Merce Cunningham
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—James Vincent Cunningham (1911–1985)
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“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)