Merce Cunningham Dance Company | Merce on the Rocks

Merce on the Rocks

A unique performance of Ocean

Thursday–Saturday, September 11–13 at 8 PM
Rainbow Quarry, Waite Park near St. Cloud, Minnesota
(an hour northwest of Minneapolis)

Experience the monumental staging of Cunningham’s landmark work Ocean like never before—inside a granite quarry 100 feet below the earth’s surface. This once-in-a-lifetime production of Cunningham’s most ambitious work, featuring the full 14-member Cunningham company, incorporates an electronic score by David Tudor and Andrew Culver’s orchestral score inspired by John Cage's initial work on the project. Music will be performed by 150 classical instrumentalists from the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra, including guest players from across the state of Minnesota, who will encircle the audience at the bottom of the quarry. Acclaimed filmmaker and longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas will stage a five-camera shoot of the entire production.

“Ocean... is a gorgeous spectacle, conceptually complex yet sensuously gratifying...
Like the sea itself, Ocean teems with life.”
The New York Times

Ocean performance site: Rainbow Quarry, St. Cloud, Minnesota

Tickets

$50 general admission

$45 Friends of MCDC

For tickets call 612.375.7600
or visit walkerart.org/tickets

Tickets on sale now.

Packages

Take part in a weekend of Minneapolis-based activities, centered around the performances of Ocean in the granite quarry. Package will include tickets to the opening night performance of Ocean. For more details, contact Jorge Fiffe at 212.255.8240 x13

or jorge@merce.org.

Click an image above to view it larger. To see many more MCDC images, visit the Merce Cunningham Flickr Galleries.

A landmark statewide collaboration, and surely one of the most sensational dance projects to be mounted in the U.S. this year, this underground work in-the-round dubbed "Merce on the Rocks" is coproduced by the Walker Art Center and the Cunningham Dance Foundation, with the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict and Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota. Major support provided by Sage and John Cowles. The St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra, along with other guest players, under the direction Sandy Nadeau, will perform the score. The filming of Ocean is made possible through major support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional funds provided by The Ford Foundation and Save America’s Treasures, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service, Department of the Interior.