What to feed a U.S. dance company overseas 1

Dance
You’re on an international dance tour, and it’s a pretty small life. I know this because I just had the great good fortune to accompany Lula Washington Dance Theatre in China last month. Life boils down to: What time in the morning do you have to put your luggage in hotel lobby? Hey, what’s on ...

Merce Cunningham Dance Company journeys to Jerusalem and Moscow

Dance
A special report from arts•meme foreign correspondent Anna Finke, traveling with Merce Cunningham Dance Company. By day, Anna works as MCDC’s wardrobe supervisor and photographer. She blogs at Finke-Ink. Anna writes first on visiting Israel: We were all excited to take in this new country and the Jerusalem Season of Culture was a wonderful host. ...

Minneapolis gets Merce Cunningham Dance Company collection

Dance · Visual arts
The good news in the dance world is that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company collection of set pieces, costumes, painted drops created for relentlessly innovative choreographer by leading artists, designers and musicians has a loving home. Alas dance fans will have to traipse to Minneapolis to see the stuff, made in New York City though ...

Merce Cunningham, genius, his company in final year of touring

Dance
Click on photos for better view —   Excerpted from article concerning the wind-up of MCDC as a performing ensemble, from March 2011 issue of “Dance” Magazine Intended to avoid the disastrous legal squabbles of the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1990s, the [Legacy] plan provides a road map to ensure the continued life ...

To Ann Arbor for Merce Cunningham concert

Dance
We’re very excited about our visit to University of Michigan Power Center to see Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform next Saturday night. The program includes the marvelous “Split Sides,” made in 2003 to a rock score by Sigur Rós and Radiohead. I wrote about “Side Splits” in La Opinión at the time. Read it here. ...

Cunningham “Legacy Tour” enters final year in 2011

Dance
In one year’s time, New Year’s Eve 2011/12, Merce Cunningham Dance Company will close for business. Try to see the company in the next year. You will not regret it. Here are some upcoming dates … January 14-15, 2011 Grand Theater Hong Kong Cultural Center Hong Kong Nearly 90² Click here for more information February ...

Merce and the midgets 2

Dance
Researching Merce Cunningham Trust trustee and former Cunningham dancer, Patricia Lent, I came across this post-911 story — a sweet tale so well written in the New York Times by Jennifer Dunning. The story concerns a class of P.S. 234 third graders taught by Ms. Lent, then a school teacher. She takes her kids to ...

Merce Cunningham’s Beach Birds (1993)

Dance
It’s August. Let’s go to the beach . . .  

merce misha mashup 2

Dance · Visual arts
“Farewell Merce Cunningham Dance Company” weekend in Los Angeles was capped by a bonus performance in which Mikhail Baryshnikov appeared with the company. It was a fundraiser for the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s “Legacy Project” and REDCAT. Charles Atlas, with whom the choreographer collaborated on multiple video projects over thirty years, presented his film homage to Merce — ...

Merce’s marvelous Irish jig 3

Dance · Reviews
Co-published on Huffington Post arts page “It was unutterably moving to watch,” said long time company archivist David Vaughan of the historic reconstruction of “Roaratorio” (1983) that graced Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s fare-thee-well performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend. “We all feel Merce in the dance.” Indeed, watching company elder Robert Swinston, 60, ...