For Merce Cunningham, dance isn't about telling a story or interpreting emotion _ it's simply about movement.
His choreography, which revolutionized modern dance, is frequently rooted in the toss of a coin or a roll of the dice with no regard for the accompanying music.
Cunningham turned 90 on Thursday, an event paired with the premiere of a rare longer piece titled "Nearly Ninety," in which he collaborates with an architect to place the musicians up on stage with the dancers.
Trevor Carlson, the executive director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, said the title is a playing on words.
"He hasn't talked about it, but he's made nearly 90 minutes of dance, and while he was making it, he was nearly 90 years of age," said Carlson.
"He's making a fun little jab at us," Carlson says, referring to the colleagues who have been making a big deal of the occasion.
The new work, which premieres at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, includes new music from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the rock band Sonic Youth, and Japanese composer Takehisa Kosugi. The costumes are by fashion designer Romeo Gigli, and the set design, in the form of a massive multilevel sculpture, is by Italian architect Benedetta Tagliabue.
Frequently hailed as the greatest living choreographer, Cunningham's career spans more than six decades and 150 works, and has included collaborations with such artists as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and bands like Radiohead and Sigur Ros.
Perhaps his most notable collaboration, however, was with avant-garde composer John Cage, his longtime partner until Cage's death in 1992.
Along the way, he has embraced technology, in some cases using a computer program to push the possibilities of what the human body can do.
"His interest has been, and remains even at 90, trying to work on something that is unfamiliar to him and that is new," Carlson said. "I think he hopes that (his latest) is a new experience for him."
Today, Cunningham, who left Martha Graham's company in 1945 to go his own way, is confined to a wheelchair after a lifetime of pounding on hard stages, but he continues to work regularly, offering a behind-the-scenes look at his training process with a webcast titled "Mondays with Merce."
His choreography is demanding and he pushes the boundaries of physical possibility _ using chance to go beyond what is familiar and comfortable in deciding whether a run, a jump or a fall should come first in series of steps.
"If you just move, your body moves in ways that are predictable, that feel good," said Gus Solomons jr., who performed with Cunningham's company from 1965 to 1968 and is now a professor of dance at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. "He said `No, I want to break habit patterns, to open the mind to possibilities.'"
The dance has been completely divorced from the accompanying music. In many cases, the performers never hear the accompaniment before they appear in front of an audience. That requires an intense understanding of the rhythm of the piece. The dancers use a stop watch backstage to keep themselves on time.
And it can be challenging to an audience, too.
"Audiences still walk out on Cunningham," Solomons said. "He really is about the work, and not about people's response to it, though he is delighted when people are outraged."
