WEXNER CENTER PRESENTS FIRST PERFORMANCE OF MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY’S LEGACY TOUR
EVENT INCLUDES PRE-SHOW TALK, WEB REFLECTIONS, OHIO STATE MASTER CLASS
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| Split Sides. Photo: Tony Dougherty |
“He has taught us something new and powerful about how to dance and how to live.” —Mikhail Baryshnikov, on the late Merce Cunningham
Columbus, OH—Choreographer Merce Cunningham, who died in July at age 90, was universally acknowledged as one of the true artistic pioneers of our time. In keeping with his express wishes just prior to his passing, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) will embark upon The Legacy Tour, a final two-year international tour that will commence on Friday, February 12 at 8 PM at the Wexner Center’s Mershon Auditorium. This concert will both commemorate and celebrate Cunningham as an unrivaled force during the last 60 years in dance and vanguard multidisciplinary practice, whose work was acknowledged here in 1993 when he received the Wexner Prize (jointly awarded to his frequent collaborator, composer John Cage, who passed away prior to the Prize event).
The Legacy Tour will be audiences’ last opportunity to see Cunningham works performed by the superb dancers he personally trained. At the conclusion of the world tour, the company will disband permanently, closing an important chapter in this country’s creative legacy. Showcasing two pieces spanning Cunningham’s rich career, the evening draws from the master’s early work and later choreography. The program features Crises from 1960, a piece set to music composed for player pianos by American maverick composer Conlon Nancarrow with costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, and Split Sides, a recent work with an electronic score composed by leading art rock bands Radiohead and Sigur Rós.
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| Crises. Photo: Briana Blasko |
Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “The Wexner Center is enormously proud to launch The Legacy Tour celebrating Cunningham’s extraordinary, lifelong contribution to the evolution of contemporary dance and creative expression. As an institution that itself commissions, supports, and presents multidisciplinary work—and having awarded the 1993 Wexner Prize to Merce Cunningham and John Cage—the Wex is a fitting venue at which to inaugurate this two-year tribute tour.”
Two distinguished faculty members of Ohio State’s Department of Dance, Karen Eliot and David Covey, will offer personal remembrances of their own experiences working with the MCDC in a pre-concert talk at 7 PM (free to all ticketholders). Eliot is a former dancer with Cunningham’s company, whose book, Dancing Lives: Five Female Dancers from the Ballet d’Action to Merce Cunningham (2007), investigates Cunningham’s historical contribution. In 1998 Covey received a Bessie award for his lighting design for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and now serves as production coordinator for Ohio State’s Department of Dance. Their reflections of Cunningham’s artistic legacy will also be posted online at www.wexarts.org. A post-performance Q&A session with Robert Swinston, director of choreography, and David Vaughn, company archivist, will conclude the evening and provide further insight into the work of this American master. In addition, a master class in Cunningham technique, taught by Swinston will take place at Ohio State’s Department of Dance for students and local dancers from Columbus.
