This session is open to all registrants but geared to the abilities participants who have some training in dance. Registration is FREE for Nasher Members and students; $10 for non-members (includes museum admission). In-person and open to the public. Advance registration required (limited spaces available).   

About Merce Cunningham Trust 

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) is widely considered to be one of the most important choreographers of all time. His approach to performance was groundbreaking in its ideological simplicity and physical complexity: he applied the idea that “a thing is just that thing” to choreography, embracing the notion that “if the dancer dances, everything is there.” With long-term collaborations with artists like Robert Rauschenberg (who contributed various design elements to over 20 of Cunningham’s dances—sometimes even creating his work onstage in “realtime” during the dance), Jasper Johns, Charles Atlas, and Elliot Caplan (rethinking the way choreography and dancing bodies could be captured on film), Cunningham’s sphere of influence extended deep into the visual arts world. 

 In 2000, Cunningham created the non-profit Merce Cunningham Trust to hold and administer the rights to his works after his death. Since the closure of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 2011, the Trust has sought to enliven and share Merce Cunningham’s work by overseeing international licensing projects, training and coaching dancers and stagers, conducting free workshops, conducting other subsidized public programs, partnering with educational and cultural institutions and supporting research. 

About Andrea Weber

Andrea Weber danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2004 – 2011, performing roles in over 25 works. Andrea began teaching Cunningham technique and repertory in 2007. She has staged Duets for Wiener Staatsballett,  Exchange, Scenario and BIPED for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Pond Way for Ballett am Rhein and Ballet Vlaanderen, Suite for Five for the CNSMD in Lyon, RainForest for the Stephen Petronio Company, Travelogue and Sounddance? at UNCSA, How To Pass, Kick, Fall and Run for the Boston Conservatory and the American Dance Festival and the Skidmore Event  in the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. In 2017, she arranged and staged the Events for the Merce Cunningham: Common Time exhibit at both the Walker Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. For Merce Cunningham's Centennial, Andrea was the primary stager for Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event, presented at CAP UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles. This Event brought together 26 dancers from all over North America to dance solos that spanned six decades of Merce's work. Since 2012, she has been awarded ten Merce Cunningham Trust Fellowships, reconstructing dances including  Nearly Ninety, Ocean, CRWDSPCR? and Second Hand. Andrea has a BFA in Dance from the Juilliard School.

About Jamie Scott

Jamie Scott is from Great Falls, Virginia and began her professional training at the Washington School of Ballet. She attended Barnard College and graduated Cum laude in 2005. Jamie worked with Merce Cunningham as a member of the Repertory Understudy Group beginning in 2007 and joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 2009. In 2012, Jamie began dancing with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. She has also worked with Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, Ana Isabel Keilson, the Merce Cunningham Trust, Bill Young and Kimberly Bartosik. Jamie teaches technique and repertory for both the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Merce Cunningham Trust. She was the recipient of a 2014-2015 Princess Grace award.

Related Exhibition: Rauschenberg Sculpture 

Robert Rauschenberg’s approach to sculpture was closely connected to his passion for music, dance and performance, as he aimed to bring what he called theater’s “sense of urgency” to his own works. Rauschenberg began working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the 1950s, and throughout the next decade, he contributed to over 20 performances by providing lighting, set, and costume designs. These collaborations echoed Rauschenberg’s studio practice and featured many of his characteristic visual elements.   

Rauschenberg Sculpture is made possible by leading support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. The Nasher Sculpture Center joins an international roster of institutions commemorating the artist’s 100th birthday. Generous support is provided by Frost Bank. Support is also provided by Gianfranco D'Amato, Leo Katz, Katherine Sachs, and the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District (DTPID). 

The Nasher Sculpture Center is supported, in part, by Nasher Members, the Christine P. Gancarz Fund at The Dallas Foundation, The City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture, Dorothy M. Rickey, TACA, the Von Rydingsvard and Greengard Foundation, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. 

Photos: 
Andrea Weber in Nearly Ninety2 (2009). Photograph by Anna Finke, 2009. Courtesy of the Merce Cunningham Trust and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library. 

Jamie Scott and Daniel Madoff in Duets (1980). Photograph by Anna Finke, 2011. Courtesy of the Merce Cunningham Trust and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library.