Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
TICKETS – $15 General Admission / $12 for BMCM+AC Members + Students w/ ID
Join us at BMCM+AC on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026 for a live performance of Merce Cunningham’s Suite for Two (1958) and a screening of the dance film Beach Birds.
About the Performance
Suite for Two (1958) is an arrangement of three solos and one duet from the dance Suite for Five (1956). Cunningham made this arrangement for Carolyn Brown and himself for a concert at the University of Pittsburgh in 1958. Suite for Two was subsequently performed on two European tours made by Cunningham, Brown, John Cage, and David Tudor in 1958 and 1960. Chalvar Monteiro dances two solos entitled “At Random” and “Stillness.” Jacquelin Harris dances “A Meander,” a new solo made for Carolyn Brown for the 1958 arrangement. The dance concludes with a duet entitled “Extended Moment.” Renowned pianist Adam Tendler plays John Cage’s Music for Piano.
About the Film Screening
“It is all based on individual physical phrasing. The dancers don’t have to be exactly together. They can dance like a flock of birds, when they suddenly take off.”
– Merce Cunningham
A work for eleven dancers, the rhythm for “Beach Birds” was much more fluid than other Cunningham dances, so that the sections could differ in length from performance to performance. John Cage composed the music, and painter Marsha Skinner provided the costumes and décor. The dancers were dressed identically in all white leotards and tights, with black gloves. Skinner’s backcloth was a white scrim on which the light varied in color and intensity, decided by a lighting plot that was devised using chance methods. While the timings did not relate to the dance structure, the gradual changes of light have been interpreted to imitate those that might occur from dawn to dusk on a beach. “Beach Birds” was adapted for film and called “Beach Birds for Camera.”
About Merce Cunningham
One of the most transformative figures in modern dance, Merce Cunningham (b. April 16, 1919) brought his radical approach to movement and composition to Black Mountain College during the Summer Sessions of 1948, 1952, and 1953. His time at BMC was pivotal—not only for the young dancer and choreographer himself, but for the College’s vibrant cross-disciplinary community.
At Black Mountain, Cunningham was surrounded by artists like John Cage (his partner and collaborator), Josef Albers, and Buckminster Fuller—artists and thinkers who, like him, were challenging boundaries between disciplines. This creative ecosystem shaped his belief that dance, music, and visual art could exist independently and still create something unified in performance.
In 1953, while still teaching at Black Mountain, Cunningham officially formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, marking a turning point in American dance. His classes and performances at the College helped sow the seeds for his revolutionary techniques—emphasizing chance operations, decentralization of the body, and a rethinking of time and space in choreography.
