Dance | Have Mercy

As Erk steadily posts wonderful photographic discoveries from the University of Wisconsin dance archives, I'm inclined to mention my rekindled interest in Merce Cunningham. While I continue to design costumes for my Warsaw project with Mr. Wilson, I'm looking to Cunningham, Rauschenberg, Cage and the gang as a major resource - serious inspiration.

In spending time with my new book about Merce, I have come across beautiful images of young Steve Paxton working with Merce in the sixties. To my eye they are stunning.

Here he is with the Merce and Carolyn Brown in 1961 - a photograph that at a glance I briefly mistook for something by George Platt Lynes from more or less the same time period.


And again in 1961 as part of a remarkable composition.