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Gathered by the corpusCollective and commented by Martina Ruhsam
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A text written by Carolyn Brown, a dancer in the “Cunningham Dance Company” for many years, commenting on Cunningham´s collaborative work with the “front-rank experimenters in the other arts”. The article (Merce Cunningham And the Language Of the Body) was published in the New York Times this year (2008).
HERE
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Merce Cunningham talks with Judith Mackrell from “The Guardian” about the infamous visual artists designing stage sets for him and about the changeover to scantier stages with projections nowadays as a consequence of low budgets (published in 2005):
HERE
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An analysis in German language of “Merce By Merce By Paik” – a film partly made by Merce Cunningham and Charles Atlas and partly by Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota. The beginning of video-dance ... (see also the text by Sabine Huschka in our Cunningham Special):
HERE
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A description of the computer choreographic software “Life Forms” that Cunningham has been using since 1989. New technologies provide him with new forms of chance operations and the possibility of motion capture.
“I think this technology can, in this case, particularly ... open out a way of looking at dance and movement in a way that would be stimulating and invigorating to the whole dance field eventually.”
HERE
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The website of the “Merce Cunningham Dance Company” (an introduction to the software “Life Forms”, a bibliography and information about workshops, classes and performances as well as a video showing Merce Cunningham as a dancer in various pieces):
HERE
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Why Cunningham thinks he never had a breakthrough, why he admires Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and why he sticks to his own advice. An interview with Merce Cunningham in “The Guardian”, published in September 2008:
HERE
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It is possible to download three films on UbuWeb Films: “Septet” (1964), “Pond Way” (1998) and “Time and Space. Concepts in Music and Visual Art (Part 1)”. Moreover there are two audio-documents with Merce Cunningham speaking about space, time, figures and shapes, movements, rhythm and gravity (very recommended!).
HERE
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An overview of Cunningham´s life as a dancer and choreographer and the history of the "Merce Cunningham Dance Company":
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... painted by Merce Cunningham:
HERE
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“Variations V”: John Cage made “Variations V” in 1965 for the “Merce Cunningham Dance Company”. He and David Tudor settled on two systems for the sound to be affected by movement. For the first, Billy Klüver and his colleagues set up a system of directional photo cells aimed at the stage lights, so that the dancers triggered sounds as they cut the light beams with their movements. A second system used a series of antennas. When a dancer came within four feet of an antenna a sound would result. Ten photo cells were wired to activate tape recorders and short-wave radios. Cecil Coker designed a control circuit, which was built by my assistant Witt Wittnebert. Film footage by Stan VanDerBeek and Nam June Paik's manipulated television images were projected on screens behind the dancers.
The score was created by flipping coins to determine each element and consisted of thirty-five “remarks” outlining the structure, components, and methodology. The specific sound score would change at each performance as it was created by radio antennas responding to the dancers' movements. (A quotation from: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/variations-v/)
You can see a part of “Variations V” (with Merce Cunninham as a dancer):
HERE
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R. Couri Hay talks with Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Louise Berliawsky Nevelson in New York / Soho, in 1974 at a benefit party for Merce Cunninham.
HERE
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John Cage: Sixteen Dances (1951): “Tranquility”. The last piece in a transitional work from 1951. Composed concurrently with the “Concerto for Prepared Piano”, it uses the same method of composition, applying various elements from a fixed gamut of chord aggregates (moves determined by chance procedures, as in the 3rd movement of the Concerto) which gradually changes over the course of the sixteen pieces. The titles (and moods) reflect the nine permanent emotions of Indian aesthetic thought, with seven interludes.
An audio-document:
HERE
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The art history context of Merce Cunningham ...
A film excerpt of Hans Richter's renowned film “Dreams That Money Can Buy” – with “rotoreliefs” by Marcel Duchamp and music by John Cage (1947). Hans Richter is a Dadaist writer and visual artist who refined the genre of experimental films from 1921 on. “Dreams That Money Can Buy” was his first film after his emigration to the United States in 1940. Among the contributors were Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Man Ray.
HERE
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“Anémic Cinéma” (1926) – a film by one of Cunningham's most appreciated artists: Marcel Duchamp. Signed with Rrose Selavy, “Anemic Cinema” was a collaboration between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The film alternates wordplay and optic illusions in constant rotation.
HERE
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Jonas De Andrade talks about connections between Merce Cunningham, Jerzy Grotowski, John Cage, Isadora Duncan, life, work, movements and voice, the void, fluxus and the audience doing the performing while he is doing a warm-up for presenting his choreography (for 4 minutes and 33 seconds he will remain still, facing the camera). “And so we learn what we already knew. Dance is ephemeral. It is for the body. And for the present moment. And the next one. And the next one.”
Jonas De Andrade, 2008: WARMING UP – as done by Merce Cunningham – a response to John Cage's silent piece – part one
HERE
WARMING UP – as done by Merce Cunningham – a response to John Cage´s silent piece – part two
HERE
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Charles Atlas: Amongst others (like Leigh Bowery, Marina Abramovic, Antony and the Johnsons, John Kelly, Michael Clark and Yvonne Rainer) Merce Cunningham has worked with the filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas. Starting originally with super8, Atlas changed over to video in the early seventies when he worked on a “video dance” piece with Merce Cunningham, getting to grips with the then new technology to produce a short film documenting and manipulating a performance of Cunningham's dance troupe.
In this video Charles Atlas is interviewed by William Oliver:
HERE
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A video portrait of Cunningham by John Feldman on the occasion of Merce Cunningham's being a Nelson A. Rockefeller Honoree at the Purchase College School of the Arts in 2007:
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A short report about the choreographer Cunningham telecast by NewsWatch in 2008. Merce Cunningham's dancers recently performed and taught at UC Davis. We can see Robert Swinston teaching “Cunningham Technique” to the students in UC Davis. Merce Cunninham talks about how he keeps a close eye on how emerging technologies can impact dancers.
HERE
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Everything about how to get/buy or test “Life Forms 4.0” – including a demo version of the animation software and a “gallery” of animated dancers:
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Merce Cunningham has been drawing animals and plants in his journal for twenty years.
Here you can get a glimpse of his painting. A deer feeding in the middle of Merce's handwriting:
HERE
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Video excerpts of the “Merce Cunningham Dance Company” performing in Columbia in October 2007:
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One minute and 8 seconds of Merce Cunningham's “Beach Birds for Camera”:
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A detailed lecture by John Rockwell about Cunningham as a revolutionary, indeterminacy as a key concept in his work, Cunningham's years as a soloist in Martha Graham's company, his fascination with the mechanics of movement, the independence of different art forms, the infamous Black Mountain College and the 3-D motion creation software program “Life Forms”:
HERE
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“BIPED” (1999). A more recent example of how Cunningham combines the movements in space with 3-D projections. “BIPED” is one of the first performances using digitally generated design.
HERE
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Nicholas Glass speaks to Cunningham (at the age of 89) about his love for dance and the arts.
HERE
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A humorous article in the German newspaper “Die Zeit”, written by the aesthetically conservative author Evelyn Finger in 2002 on the occasion of the 50th birthday of the “Merce Cunningham Dance Company” and their jubilee tour. She focuses on Cunningham's dedication to disharmonies in his choreographies (German):
HERE
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“Dancing into the future”: A multimedia guide to the work of Merce Cunningham with video, audio and picture links:
HERE
(9.12.2008)
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