Merce Cunningham Dance Co. Legacy Tour Arrives in Chicago

Celebrating a lifetime of artistic achievement by one of the world's most important contemporary choreographers, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's Legacy Tour comes to Chicago in a co-presentation by The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park. The Company's final Chicago performances take place November 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph Dr., Chicago. Dance Center faculty member Bonnie Brooks will give a pre-performance talk before each performance at 7 p.m., free and open to ticket holders.

Program A (November 18) includes Squaregame (1976), last performed in 1980 (prior to its revival for the Legacy Tour), which was the first commission for MCDC Music Director Takehisa Kosugi and features décor by Mark Lancaster; Quartet (1982), which, despite its title, is a work for five dancers set to David Tudor's live electronic composition "Sextet for Seven," with costumes by Lancaster; and Antic Meet (1958), structured like a series of vaudeville scenes set to a John Cage score and with décor, costumes and lighting by Robert Rauschenberg. Program B (November 19) is Roaratorio (1983), an evening-length large-scale work set to Cage's complex 1979 composition "Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake," consisting of an audio collage of music, text and sounds collected by Cage from locations in Ireland referenced in Joyce's novel.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company appears Friday and Saturday, November 18 (Program A) and 19 (Program B) at 8 p.m. at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph Dr., Chicago. Single tickets are $25-65 and are available through The Dance Center by calling 312-369-8330 or visiting colum.edu/dancecenter; tickets also are available at the Harris Theater box office, located in Millennium Park at 205 E. Randolph Dr., by calling 312-334-7777 or by visiting harristheaterchicago.org. Subscribers who order tickets to three or more performances from The Dance Center's 2011-12 season save 20%. All programming is subject to change.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES
On Monday, November 14 at 6:30 p.m. at Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, there will be a free screening of Ocean, a film featuring an in-the-round company performance in a Minnesota granite quarry, accompanied by a live orchestra, which Cunningham produced with longtime collaborator Charles Atlas. A post-screening discussion, moderated by Brooks, includes Merce Cunningham Dance Company Executive Director Trevor Carlson, Dance Center Music Director Richard Woodbury and Columbia College Chicago Film/Video Chair Bruce Sheridan.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company Director of Choreography Robert Swinston will lead a DanceMasters class Wednesday, November 16 at 6 p.m. at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. DanceMasters is a series of community master classes presented by The Dance Center's division of Community Outreach and Education (COE), in partnership with the Lou Conte Dance Studio at the Hubbard Street Dance Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Classes are for dancers at the intermediate level or higher. Participation in the DanceMasters class is $15, $10 for students; space is limited. This class is open to members of the public who wish to view the class from the audience; admission is $5.

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will also participate in The Dance Center's FamilyDance Matinee Series with a Merce Cunningham MinEvent Saturday, November 19 at 3 p.m., featuring a performance of Cunningham choreography by Dance Center students, preceded at 2:15 p.m. by a free movement workshop for children and their families led by Company Manager Kevin Taylor. The FamilyDance Matinee MinEvent takes place at The Dance Center. Admission is free for children younger than 12, $15 for adults. Call 312-369-8330 or visit colum.edu/dancecenter.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY
Merce Cunningham Dance Company came into being in 1953, , when Cunningham took a group of dancers who had been working with him-including Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Remy Charlip and Paul Taylor-to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, joined by music director John Cage and musician David Tudor. Cunningham subsequently choreographed more than 160 works for the company. The company's annual schedule has included domestic and international tours and seasons in New York City. Cunningham extended the frontiers of choreography for more than half a century, including his use of the computer program Life Forms, now called DanceForms®.

In his many works for the company, Cunningham was noted for his collaborations with important contemporary visual artists and musicians, especially with John Cage, his life partner from the 1940s until Cage's death in 1992. In the course of their work together, they proposed a number of radical innovations, the most famous and controversial being the relationship of dance and music, both of which are time arts. They concluded that the two should exist independently, occurring in the same time and space but without supporting or being connected to one another in the usual way.

Among other noteworthy collaborators have been visual artists Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Robert Morris. Beginning in the 1970s, Cunningham choreographed a number of video- and filmdances with Charles Atlas and with Elliot Caplan.

Before founding his company, Cunningham was a soloist in the company of the legendary Martha Graham. He began choreographing independently in the 1940s.

Prior to his death in 2009, Cunningham had the foresight to develop the Legacy Plan, a vision of the transitioning of his company and the preservation of his work after his death. Part of the plan has been the Legacy Tour, encompassing performances in 40 cities, after which the company will disband.

THE DANCE CENTER
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine and "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader, is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance. Programs of The Dance Center are supported, in part, by the Alphawood Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, Sara Lee Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Arts Midwest, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation and New England Foundation for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Special thanks to Friends of The Dance Center.

The Dance Center's presentation of Merce Cunningham Dance Company is funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation with additional support from the MacArthur Foundation Rental Subsidy Program at the Harris Theater.

The Dance Center's 2011-12 season continues with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (February 9-11), Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak (February 23-25), The Space/Movement Project with Rachel Damon/Synapse Arts and with Erica Mott (March 8-10) and Ballet Hispanico (March 22-24).

HARRIS THEATER FOR MUSIC AND DANCE
Opened in 2003, the Harris Theater's mission is to partner and collaborate with an array of Chicago's emerging and mid-sized performing arts organizations to help them build the resources and infrastructure necessary to achieve artistic growth and long-term organizational sustainability. The Harris Theater for Music and Dance was the first multi-use performing arts venue to be built in the Chicago downtown area since 1929, and today the Theater continues to host the most diverse offerings of any venue in Chicago, featuring the city's world-renowned music and dance institutions and the Harris Theater Presents series of acclaimed national and International Artists and ensembles. To learn more about the season at the Harris Theater, visit harristheaterchicago.org or call the box office at 312-334-7777 to request a brochure.

The Harris Theater is pleased to announce that UBS is serving as the 2011-2012 Season Sponsor. The Harris Theater's 2011-2012 Season will also be made possible with support from United Airlines, the Harris Theater's Official Airline of the 2011-2012 Season and the Official and Exclusive Sponsor of Paris Opéra Ballet U.S. Tour. Support for Harris Theater programming is provided by the Irving Harris Foundation Presenting Fund, established in 2006 to bring to Chicago artists or ensembles of the highest caliber, which would normally not be seen here in order to complement the works of the Theater's resident companies and build audiences for the Theater. All performances are on The Elizabeth Morse Genius Stage. The Harris Theater is partially supported by a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

The Harris Theater's 2011-12 See The Dance season continues with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (January 24) and the Chicago debut of the Paris Opera Ballet performing Giselle (June 27-28) and a program of mixed French repertoire (June 29-July 1).