MERCE / MISHA / MORE
Film | Encore
September 20 at
Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts presents the encore of MERCE / MISHA / MORE, a film celebrating decades of friendship, mutual admiration, and collaboration between Mikhail Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham. Back by popular demand after its spring 2024 premiere, the production includes interviews with Mikhail Baryshnikov, rarely seen rehearsal footage from 1967 and 1994, the duet from Cunningham’s Landrover, featuring Jacquelin Harris and Chalvar Monteiro, and Daniel Madoff’s film Event at REDCAT, performed in 2010 by Mikhail Baryshnikov with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and produced by Nancy Dalva.
This program celebrates the 60th anniversary of Merce Cunningham’s first Event, and the 50th anniversary of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s arrival in the West.
Introduction by film producer Nancy Dalva, with special appearances by dancers Sienna Blaw, Sarah Cecilia Bukowski, Morgan Amirah Burns, Claude “CJ” Johnson, and Chaery Moon, and joined by Mikhail Baryshnikov.
About Mikhail Baryshnikov
Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) was a celebrated dancer and choreographer renowned for his groundbreaking work and his profound influence on generations of dancemakers and artists.
Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) was a celebrated dancer and choreographer renowned for his groundbreaking work and his profound influence on generations of dancemakers and artists. Born in Centralia, Washington, he attended the Cornish School in Seattle where he was introduced to the work of Martha Graham and met the composer John Cage who would become his closest collaborator and life partner. In 1939, after relocating to New York City, Cunningham began a six-year tenure as a soloist in the Graham company, and soon began presenting his own choreography. In the summer of 1953, during a teaching residency at Black Mountain College, Cunningham formed a dance company to explore his innovative ideas. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company remained in continuous operation until its closure in 2011, with Cunningham as artistic director until his death in 2009. In collaboration with John Cage, Cunningham proposed a series of radical ideas including the separation of music and dance, the use of chance operations, and novel ways to utilize film and technology. Over the course of his seventy-year career he choreographed 180 dances and over 700 Events, collaborated with such renowned artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, David Tudor and Christian Wolff, and earned some of the highest honors bestowed in the arts. Today his work continues to be performed by professional and student dancers worldwide.
