pieces, they were not con-
ceived to be in direct service
of the dance itself. Rather,
each element was to be created
in dependently (often, the visual
artists and musicians never even
saw staging notes or attended
rehearsals), then brought
together in what Cunningham
called the “common time” of
the performance itself – con-
current, not conjoined, parts
of a whole. The groundbreaking
works that resulted upended
convention and decisively shift-
ed the material vocabularies
for art and dance, putting all
the constituent elements – per-
formers and makers involved
with these collaborative pro-
ductions – on equal footing.
After Cunningham’s death
in 2009, his company went
on a final two-year world tour
before it disbanded, per theartist’s wishes. In 2011, the
Walker Art Center in Minne-
apolis announced its acquisition
of a treasure trove: the com-
pany archive of more than 4,300
objects, including costumes,
sets, posters, photographs, and
sketches covering some 150 of
his choreographic works. Six
years later, the museum mount-
ed “Merce Cunningham: Com-
mon Time,” a huge exhibition
based on the acquisition.
“These objects are such a rich
trove from which to curate new
exhibitions. We could harness
this collection in any number
of ways,” says Pavel Pys ́, visual
arts curator for the Walker Art
Center. The museum doesn’t
own the right to restage these
performance works, however;
it can only display the objects
related to the performance. He
says the shift in context of theseobjects raises a number of ques-
tions: “What does it mean to
transpose materials made for
live performance to static obser-
vation, as objects in a gallery?”
That shift in context is a
source of intriguing tension,
particularly when the artist
behind the objects becomes
famous in their own right.
For example, Rauschenberg
created the décor for Minutiae
(1958), a key early dance for
the company, in his first col-
laboration with Cunningham.
The resulting collapsible back-
drop was also the first of
Rauschenberg’s hybrid sculp-
ture/painting Combines, which
became a cornerstone of his
later work.
Cunningham’s collabora-
tion with Comme des Garçons
designer Rei Kawakubo,
who created the costumesfor Scenario (1997), was equally
notable. In the spirit of her
now-famous collection from
the same year (“Body Meets
Dress, Dress Meets Body”),
she outfitted Cunningham’s
dancers in bright stripes and
checkered patterns, reshaping
their bodies with irregular,
padded bulges around the hips
and rear, chest, back, and shoul-
ders. Her costumes not only
transfigured the dancers’ forms,
but also sometimes restricted
movement or set them off-
balance, dramatically altering
their performance. Her witty,
absurd costume designs func-
tioned as much as a choreo-
graphic element of the overall
work as they did an aesthetic one.
Though the objects no
longer fulfil their original pur-
pose, that doesn’t mean they’re
no longer in use. Pys ́saysabove:
Jasper Johns made
the set elements for
Walkaround Time (1968)
using readily available,
inexpensive materials:
plastic and paint.
right:
Robert Rauschenberg
designed the costumes
for Travelogue (1977),
including this “color-
wheel fan skirt.”54 american craft aug/sept 19