CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/16/2021

Remembering Merce Cunningham, born OTD 1919

In 1990, Nam June Paik said, "Merce's dance is a dance without a center, without a focal point, without a story or even sex appeal. It's decentralized, like the canvases of Jasper Johns or Mark Rothko, although it’'s cooler and sparser than Abstract Expressionism. Someday I’d like to film him and his group dancing in a schoolyard, looking down at them from above, on a rooftop, far away. That’s my dream." Reproduced from Merce Cunningham: Common Time, this still is from Merce by Merce by Paik by Charles Atlas, Shigeko Kubota and Paik. Produced in 1978, the video collages manipulated and colorized images of Cunningham dancing with footage of city traffic and a baby's first steps, alongside the subtitle, "Is this dance?"