Merce Cunningham Dance Company

More than fifty years ago, Merce Cunningham developed a dance vocabulary whose axioms still constitute the foundations of contemporary dance. This is dance that no longer relies on linear elements, either narrative or psychological, and is composed of movements that do not necessarily lead to or away from a climax. As in abstract painting, every element (a movement, a sound, a change of lighting) is expressive in itself. He is the originator of the concept of a dance production as an act rather than a product, as a process that creates its meaning as it unfolds. At the age of eighty-five, the master is still making vital choreographic works. 'Every new movement, every new experience of motion, has to be discovered and brought to express its full meaning in order to enrich the memory of dance.' We wanted our public to witness this memory of dance and this boundless creative urge at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and so we present two programmes of mainly recent work by Merce Cunningham.