Mercier Philip Cunningham, known as Merce Cunningham, is part of an artistic current, themodern Art, which affected the world of visual arts, music and, to a lesser extent, that of dance.

Merce Cunningham begins her dancing career at Martha Graham, one of the great figures of what was then called the “ modern dance ”. It is therefore in this context that Cunningham, pushed by his companion the composer John Cage, will compose his first pieces. He left Graham's company in 1945 and created his first solos. In 1953, he founded his company, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MVDC) au Black Mountain College. In 2002, Merce Cunningham received at monaco, for his entire career, le Nijinsky Prize submitted by Robert Rauschenberg.