From PRX.

This is Studio 360. I'm Kurti Anderson.

On this Studio 360 podcast Extra, we're celebrating the life and work of one of the great American choreographers,

Merce Cunningham, who was born 100 years ago this week.

He danced, starting as a member of Martha Graham's troupe, and then made dances for 70 years,

and embraced innovation from start to finish.

New dance forms, new technology, new music, new collaborators.

Like when, at age 84, he worked with Radiohead and Sigurros on a beautiful new piece that you're hearing called Split Sides.

Merce Cunningham dancers were famous for seeming to defy the laws of physics,

leaping high and suddenly switching direction in mid-air.

When Cunningham spoke with us in 2001, he was using computers to try to make

his dances even more complex.

I think I've always been interested in movement. There's no reason for that. It's just,

it seems to be it should interest everybody we're

so involved with all the time. I think, of course, of animals and birds, watching their

movements have always been totally fascinating to me.

Movement is so much a part of our daily experience that we don't think of it as a thing. We don't even think of it, we just sort of do it.

But if you thought about it, say, how do you walk?

I don't mean just the mechanics, but if we all walk the same, why is it we all walk differently?

And that struck me years ago, and I thought, well, that was a way to think about movement,

that we were doing the same thing, but we all did it differently.

My name is Daniel Roberts. I'm a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

...