Merce Cunningham's presence in the present: A creative legacy at the turn of the 21st century

In this dissertation, I analyze the activities of the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation in order to address the confluence of many issues facing artists, arts organizations and arts policy-makers in the United States: the relationship of present creative practice to historical documentation; the interaction between the organizing bodies of policy and administration and the human bodies that enact and participate in creative work; and the institutionalization of memory and community. The overriding theme of my dissertation is the interaction of creativity as visceral, embodied human action and the culture that contains, defines and mediates that action as memory, document, administration, presentation and technology.;Each chapter of this dissertation exists on its own as an exploration into the legacy of Merce Cunningham; his creative legacy of over 200 dance works as enactments of a dance philosophy that have influenced creators in many fields, his administrative legacy as a paradigmatic model of the nonprofit dance company, his organization's legacy of conceptualizing new models of arts presentation, and his technological legacy as a leader in reaching audiences through the use of contemporary technologies. Each of these aspects of his legacy is dependent upon Cunningham's dedication to dance and his insistence on immersing himself in his own philosophical commitment to being in the present. My research methodology relies heavily on document research coupled with performance analysis, interviews and participant observership. My perspective focuses on what Cunningham's work means today as informed by the past, through a lens shaded not only by dance and performance theory and criticism but also by theories and issues in arts administration and audience reception.