Merce Cunningham

American dancer and choreographer (1919–2009), a revolutionary of modern dance who separated movement from musical accompaniment and used chance procedures to compose — the lifelong artistic partner of John Cage.

Cunningham treated dance as an autonomous structure of time and space, often decided by chance and only joined to Cage's sound in performance. His company became a proving ground for avant-garde collaboration across dance, music, and visual art.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: contemporary (Black Mountain College). Cunningham was part of the Black Mountain College community during the years R. Buckminster Fuller taught and experimented there, performing in the same milieu that staged Fuller's geodesic trials and the 1948 Ruse of Medusa. He belongs, with Cage and Albers, to the constellation of experimenters whose contrasting methods frame Fuller's own, as examined in The Experimenters.

See Also

• The Experimenters (The Experimenters) — study of Black Mountain experiment including Cunningham's circle
• John Cage (John Cage) — his lifelong collaborator and fellow Black Mountain figure

Sources

• The Experimenters (source reference) — study of the Black Mountain experimental milieu