Merce Cunningham, amazing dance pioneer, died today at 90 after 6 decades of dancing and choreographing. He was still teaching dance, using a stool and a bar. He was still performing, and premiered a piece called "Nearly Ninety" this year, dancing in a wheelchair. It was set to new music from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the rock band Sonic Youth, and Japanese composer Takehisa Kosugi.
Cunningham set the standard in innovation in choreography, never resting on past laurels. He proved that there is always room for something new, "if your eyes and ears are open and you have wit enough to see and hear and imagine."
When he first started creating dances, audiences would boo and walk out, and even threw tomatoes at the stage, but that didn't stop him. And eventually he was recognized the world over as a choreographic genius. "Over the history of art, something unfamiliar becomes part of society and everybody accepts it. Obviously, the artist goes on. You try to see what the next problem or question to ask is".
Cunningham once said that "dance was movement, movement of any kind, and it is as accurate and impermanent as breathing."
NPR's Renee Montange asked Cunningham three years ago if that meant his last breath would be a dance.
With that definition in mind, he replied that as long as he's living, he'll be dancing.
"Yes or I can call it dancing," Cunningham laughed. "Even if no one else does."
There are many videos of his dances throughout the decades on youtube. Here's a montage of some of my favorites.
I think the most important things that Merce demonstrated to me were the childlike joy of exploration, and the courage to create his vision in a world that often discourages both innovation and uniqueness.
And when we are dancing on our path and we run into barriers or confusion or fatigue, it will help us to remember both Merce Cunningham's unstoppable spirit and his straightforward advice and do what an artist does; open our eyes and ears, use our wit to see and imagine, and find another question.
What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
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