back
An Old Mentor’s New Medium
January 20, 2008; The New York Times
By Julie Bloom
Summary
...the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will begin recording “Mondays With Merce,” an online video program featuring weekly episodes of Mr. Cunningham’s Monday class, on its Web site, merce.org. Financed in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Booth Ferris Foundation, and executed in collaboration with New York University, the program will also provide a glimpse into Mr. Cunningham’s artistic process, allowing viewers to observe as he teaches, rehearses and even creates new works...
The program has three major components. First, there will be 26 episodes online beginning in September. Each will include 30 to 40 minutes of technique class, edited and supplemented with interviews with Mr. Cunningham, collaborators like the artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg amd some of the original dancers from the pieces, and archival material. The episodes will show the inspiration for dances and reveal the threads that link one work to another...
...Second, the full 90-minute weekly classes will be available to universities and colleges by subscription, allowing them to invite Mr. Cunningham into any studio as a virtual instructor. The company eventually hopes to add a component allowing students to ask Mr. Cunningham questions at the end of the semester...
...The program’s third component is preservation...all the digital recordings, edited and raw, [will] be archived by Bobst Library at N.Y.U.
(The program was also an inaugural recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund...)
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
top of the page