Merce Cunningham 1919 – 2009
Merce Cunningham in 1958 by Richard Rutledge
“…only he who is willing to give his body
for the sake of the world
is fit to be entrusted with the world.
Only he who can do it with love
is worthy of being the
steward of the world.”
~Tao Te Ching
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.
He went on doing so almost to the last. Until 1989, when he reached the age of 70, he appeared in every single performance given by his company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company; in 1999, at 80, though frail and holding onto a barre, he danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater. And in 2009, even after observing his 90th birthday with the world premiere of the 90-minute “Nearly Ninety,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music he went on choreographing for his dancers, telling people as they went to say farewell to him that he was still creating dances in his head.
Cunningham, dancing a solo piece titled “Changeling.”
The British ballet teacher Richard Glasstone maintains that the three greatest dancers he ever saw were Fred Astaire, Margot Fonteyn and Mr. Cunningham. He was American modern dance’s equivalent of Nijinsky: the long neck, the animal intensity, the amazing leap.
“In his final years
he became almost routinely hailed
as the world’s greatest choreographer.
For many,
he had simply been
the greatest living artist
since Samuel Beckett.”
At 90! At 90! Can enough good be said about the benefits of dance beyond even the aesthetic? I wish I’d've seen him. Baryshnikov once when he danced The Nutcracker in DC. , and Nureyev in a café in Paris if my mother can be believed… .
E,
He is and was enthralling. Sadly, you seem to learn more about this people
in death than in life. I was struck by Richard Glasstone’s favorite
dancers: Fred Astaire, Margot Fonteyn and Merce Cunningham, suspecting
that Cunningham was the least well known of the three. And I wholly agree
on the benefits of dance in contributing to longevity and passion.