Merce Cunningham Dance Once Considered Lost, Found

The Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Merce Cunningham Trust will present rare works from the late American choreographer Merce Cunningham that includes one dance, "Changeling," that hasn't been seen (nor danced) in more than fifty years. It will be performed by former Cunningham company dancer, Silas Riener.

The dance had been created and danced by Cunningham in 1957. And then, after a time, it wasn't performed anymore and it was "lost."

Merce Cunningham, Changeling (1957).

(Ed Meneeley/Baryshnikov Arts Center)

"It's something that happens in dance," said Marina Harss, dance writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times. "If you don't perform a work, it's almost as if a painting lost its pigment or a sculpture melted, it just disappears into thin air."

Then, in 2014, a researcher in Germany happened upon a mislabeled film of Cunningham dancing the solo.

"So it's back again," Harss said.

BAC is showing the entire film. Two of the works in it, including "Changeling," will be performed live with piano accompaniment. 

BAC Residency Spring 2016 I Excerpts of Merce Cunningham's Suite for Five (1958) from Baryshnikov Arts Center on Vimeo.

Click on 'Listen' to hear Harss'   conversation with WNYC's Soterios Johnson.