Merce Cunningham: Beyond The Perfect Stage - Hardcover

Stephanie Berger; Nancy Dalva

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 886208465X ISBN 13: 9788862084659

Publisher: Damiani, 2016

Synopsis

In Beyond the Perfect Stage, Stephanie Berger captures the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing in a series of site-specific "Events" from 2008 to 2011 from a multiplicity of perspectives, creating a photographic choreography that combines the "Events" in a new way. The Cunningham dancers warm up and then perform in various situations--as Cunningham called the galleries and the especially constructed stages for each "Event"--including Richard Serra's steel sculptures, Dan Flavin's neon light installations, Sol LeWitt's Minimalist white boxes and the vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. Berger captures Cunningham's evanescent art, constructing a new experience while at the same time preserving the original, thus operating very much within the aesthetic framework Cunningham himself proposed. Vivid, immediate, unmediated yet curated, her photographic "Event" contextualizes the dances in a personal but entirely available form.

About this title

About the Author

Stephanie Berger has been photographing performance and cultural events for over twenty-five years for many major cultural centres and venues such as Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Met Museum, Dia Art Foundation, Baryshnikov Arts Center and The Kitchen. Her photographs have appeared regularly covering the arts, music, dance, opera and social events in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, international journals and book projects. She has been the staff photographer for the Lincoln Center Festival since its inception in 1996.The Festival will celebrate its 20th Anniversary with an upcoming digital exhibit of her photographs. Stephanies photographs of dancers were the scenic décor for the Off-Broadway show, River Deep about Tina Turner at Playwrights Horizon directed by Gabrielle Lansner. She has been commissioned by many top dance companies, choreographers, theatre companies and musicians including: Merce Cunningham, Mark Morris, Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones, Robert Wilson, Bang On A Can and Young Peoples Chorus. She works regularly for PBS photographing many of their hosts and casts for programmes such Ken Burns, Downton Abbey, Vicious, Charlie Rose, History Detectives, and PBS Arts Festival. She has exhibited collections of her photographs in galleries and public art spaces including solo exhibits at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, The New York State Theater Gallery, The Walter Reade Gallery at the Film Society, John Jay College Gallery and numerous group exhibits, most recently at Lower Manhattan Cultural Center and ARTSWestchester. In June 2013, her outdoor photo installation, Dancing in the Streets curated by Apertures Melissa Harris and Designer, Yolanda Cuomo, was a featured exhibition at the LOOK3 Photo Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia. Stephanie graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and studied photography at Hampshire College with Jerome Liebling. She worked as a photographer for the City of New Yorks Department of Transportation in the 1980s climbing to the tops of bridges to document New York Citys infrastructure and public works. Many of these photographs were displayed throughout the New York City subway system. She is also a member of the 52nd Street Project, which matches kids from disadvantaged neighbourhoods with professional theatre artists through unique mentoring programmes.

From the Back Cover

Merce Cunningham changed the way people dance and the way people see dancing in the same way that Picasso and the Cubists changed the way people painted and the way people see painting. He took dance apart and put it back together again, leaving out all but the most essential. He stripped dance of conventional narrative and continuity, he conceived it without music and without decor. He took it out of the proscenium (but later put it back) and exploded the stage picture into fragments. -Nancy Dalva BEYOND THE PERFECT STAGE captures the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing in a series of site-specific Events in the art galleries of Dia:Beacon in 2008-2009 and in their final in New York City, on New Years Eve, 2011. From a multiplicity of perspectives, Stephanie Berger captures the dancers within the frame of her lens, creating a photographic choreography that combines the components of the Events in a new way. As the book unfolds, you see the Cunningham dancers warming up, and then performing in various situations (as Cunningham called the galleries and the especially constructed stages for each Event), including Richard Serras steel sculptures, Dan Flavins neon light installation, and Sol Lewitts minimalist white boxes. Merce Cunningham here, as throughout his career, presented his work alongside contemporary artists of stature and significance, proposing dance as a visual art. The book concludes with the companys final performances inside the vast Park Avenue Armory in December 2011, two years after the choreographers death, in the grand finale of the great Modernist dance company of the 20th-- century. Stephanie Berger captures Cunninghams evanescent andas he called itimpermanent art, proposing a new experience while at the same time preserving the original, thus operating very much within the aesthetic framework Cunningham himself proposed. Vivid, immediate, unmediated yet curated, her photographic Event is an entirely contained experience, contextualizing the dances in a personal, but entirely available form.

Edition details

• Publisher: Damiani
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 886208465X
• ISBN 13: 9788862084659
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96