During the 11 years that Jean Freebury danced for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, she discovered the value of being specific not just with your movement but also with your rhythm. “Merce had metered phrases, and also unmetered phrases where the rhythm would come out of the movement itself,” she says. Sometimes, there were even […]
As a dancer with Compagnie CNDC-Angers/Robert Swinston for the past four years, Anna Chirescu changed the way she approached taking on new challenges. “Robert is an American who works in France, where the culture is very different. He says that French people talk and think much, but in America it’s much more about the doing. […]
“Merce Cunningham: Common Time,” an eight-gallery collection of stage sets, costumes, music, film and a series of live performances at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, continues through July 30. The exhibition highlights the prolific postmodern choreographer’s many collaborations with artists such as John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Morris. Robert Rauschenberg’s Trophy […]
In the 1970s, Janaki Patrik, artistic director of The Kathak Ensemble & Friends, studied with Merce Cunningham in New York City. She remembers the subtle way he would give a correction. “I loved the technique. It was pure and spare, but when he taught the class, it was electric. To make a correction, he might […]