-
Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington
-
Merce Cunningham starts to study dance at the age of 12
-
Cunningham starts school at the Cornish School of Fine arts where he changed his major from theater to dance. This was also where he met his life partner and, later, business partner, John Cage
-
Inspired by Martha Graham whose company he was a part of, Cunningham began to start choreographing his own works.
-
Cunningham first began to debut his works, such as 'A Root of Unfocus'
-
Cunningham leaves Martha Graham's dance company to work on his own stuff with partner, John Cage
-
Utilized his newly developed techniques called “choreography by chance” in his dance 'Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three'. Choreography by chance was a technique that used isolated movements are assigned by random chance in an assigned sequence. An example of this choreography would be the act of flipping a coin.
-
Choreographed by Cunningham, it was the first modern dance to ever be choreographed to an electronic score.
-
Cunningham started his own company, employing many people including his partner, John Cage.
-
Cunningham and his company go on their first international tour
-
Cunningham abandons his company's repertory to start working more with film and videotape for choreography
-
'Locale' was the first film that Cunningham created for his choreography
-
Arthritis takes Cunningham away from the dance stage. However, he begins to experiment with animated computer programming for choreography
-
John Cage dies in New York, New York
-
Merce Cunningham is awarded the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperial prize for theater/film. This is one of the arts' most prestigious awards
-
Cunningham dies in New York, New York
