John Cage & Merce Cunningham

John Cage and Merce Cunningham met at the Cornish School of Fine Arts in Seattle. The two first visited BMC in 1948, stopping on their way to the West Coast, and gave performances of sonatas and dance compositions. They also helped to reconstruct Erik Satie's The Ruse of Medusa. They returned to BMC in 1952 to teach and develop their different mediums and later John Cage became the musical director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The two worked together for most of their lives on a number of different performances including "How to pass, kick, fall and run," which was first performed in 1965 with choreography by Cunningham and music by Cage. The performance had an athletic theme and kept the dancers in constant motion. Cage and Cunningham were life partners until Cage's death in 1992.