Merce Cunningham: Thank You and Goodbye

The Walker Art Center pays tribute to a performing arts legend and honors an unconventional wish for preserving his legacy.

In 1963, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) made its Minnesota debut at the Walker Art Center.

Image credit: Courtesy Walker Art Center.

By: Thomas Kwong |   October 2011   |  From the print edition

In 1963, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) made its Minnesota debut at the Walker Art Center, performing the acclaimed Antic Meet. The experimental and influential company, led by its namesake choreographer, was only 10 years old at that point, on the cusp of its first international tour—one that would cement Cunningham’s reputation as a vanguard of the modern dance world. It is only fitting that MCDC’s final performances in Minnesota would be at the Walker, less than two months before one of Cunningham’s dying wishes—that the company disband at the end of 2011—is honored.

Starting Oct. 28, the Walker will host a large-scale exhibition featuring performances by MCDC and its former principal dancer, Jérôme Bel; a retrospective of set designs and costumes; and exhibitions from the company’s early artistic director, neo-Dada artist Robert Rauschenberg, as well as Brazilian abstract artist and collaborator Ernesto Neto.

Cunningham, who died in 2009 at the age of 90, was best known to those outside the dance world for his collaborations with other renowned artists—most notably his (romantic and artistic) partner John Cage and Rauschenberg. Within the performing-arts world, Cunningham’s approach to modern dance, namely his use of “chance procedures,” was groundbreaking. Trevor Carlson, executive director of the MCDC and a longtime friend of Cunningham, says the choreographer was driven by a desire to “satisfy the curiosity he had in discovering as many different ways as he could to move the human body through space.”

A hallmark of Cunningham’s style is the lack of narrative and a focus on turning the act of dancing itself into the primary subject. His chance procedures method uses random choices to make decisions about what will happen in a piece. For instance, if a dancer is moving from right to left across a stage, a chance-based decision may dictate that if the choreographer and the dancer are both left-handed, the dancer should engage his left arm. The resulting movement may then lead the choreographer to discover a new movement in the torso, which influences the next set of movements. Carlson explains that when a choreographer utilizes chance, “it takes the decision from one’s own ego and forces the choreographer to do something with whatever the outcome is—and often requires more thought or more work in making it possible.”

Chance procedures also extended into the way Cunningham collaborated with other artists. Betsy Carpenter, one of the Walker’s visual arts curators, explains that collaborators would work separately from Cunningham.

“When it came to debuting the design, the first time Cunningham’s dancers or himself would encounter it would be at the dress rehearsal,” she explains. “That idea of parallel expression in these [works] is very remarkable and profound.”

The Walker’s set design and costume exhibition comes from a massive acquisition made earlier this year of 150 MCDC works, the largest single acquisition the museum has ever made. Carpenter says Rauschenberg’s works were of special interest due to his importance within the Walker’s existing collection and because Cunningham and Rauschenberg’s decade of collaboration (which began in 1954) was a critical period in both artists’ careers. Carpenter also emphasizes that the duo’s partnership was “reflective of a moment in art history where performance was becoming an important part of artists expressing themselves. This…union between two powerhouses from two different fields is astounding and unique.”

Cunningham’s choreography and collaborations aren’t the only experimental aspects of his dance company. Following the wishes put forth in his unconventional Legacy Plan, the MCDC will perform its final show in New York City Dec. 31, 2011. The plan, designed in 2009 by Cunningham, Carlson and several others, was created both to preserve Cunningham’s oeuvre and to honor his wishes after his death. Principal among these was that no new work be created by other choreographers under his company’s name.

After the Dec. 31 show, MCDC will disband and the Merce Cunningham Trust will manage his works and legacy. The Legacy Plan also calls for digitally captured performances of Cunningham’s key works in order to ensure that examples performed by dancers he trained will be available for study by other companies or schools. This unique method of preserving Cunningham’s pieces reflects the dancer’s long history of utilizing cutting-edge technology (motion-capture software and animation among them) to explore new aspects of movement. It’s an innovative method of handling an artistic legacy, especially fitting for an artist who spent his life at the forefront of artistic experimentation.

Carlson is aware the company is in new territory: “We won’t understand if this is a successful model [of] preservation for a single artist’s choreography,” he says. “We believed it’s the right thing for Merce and Merce believed it was right for Merce, but we won’t know for another 20 years.”

For Carlson, these final performances are an extension of the way Cunningham spent his last few weeks. As friends and dancers would visit, “each person sat before him and said, ‘thank you and goodbye,’ and he also said, ‘thank you and goodbye.’ We’re getting to do the same experience for Merce and the people he touched."

For more information about upcoming Merce Cunningham events at the Walker Art Center visit their website here.