Introduction

Merce Cunningham reached the age of seventy-seven in 1996, an age at which many creative artists are content to rest on their laurels, or at least to leave behind whatever controversies they may have caused during their careers. Not so Cunningham. In the first place, his seventies have been a time of intense creativity in which he has choreographed as many as four new works a year. And Cunningham is as strongly committed as ever to the discovery of new ways of moving and of making movement, refusing to be hampered by the physical limitations that have come with age. Since 1991 every new work has been made at least in part with the use of the computer program Life Forms, which enables him to devise choreographic phrases that he himself would be unable to perform — and which challenge and develop the virtuosity of the young dancers in his company.