Before the Merce Cunningham Dance Company made New York City its home, it was born in the rural mountains of North Carolina at Black Mountain College. Though Black Mountain College existed for less than 30 years, from 1933 to 1957, its legacy looms large, both as the birthplace for early collaborations between Cunningham, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg, and for the many other influential artists who worked or studied there, from Ruth Asawa to Willem de Kooning to David Tudor.
Merce Cunningham, 1948. Photo by Clemens Kalischer, courtesy BMCM+AC.
Now, an ongoing exhibition at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, North Carolina, takes a deep dive into the institution’s history of performance—from the Bauhaus movement that influenced its early years to the storied Cunningham performances that would become dance history legend to the ways in which the college’s experimentations rippled outward to Judson Church and beyond.
“Points in Space,” which was organized by the museum’s executive director Jeff Arnal, along with writer and activist Adolfo Alzuphar, runs through January 10 and spans dance, music, theater, film, and more. An assortment of performances and other programming—including a two-day event in January celebrating Cunningham, Cage, and Rauschenberg; and Johnny Loves Johann, which pairs four choreographers with acclaimed violinist Johnny Gandelsman later this month—will animate the vast archival materials included in the exhibition.
Named after the Cunningham piece of the same name, “Points in Space” contains rarely seen materials featuring dance giants in their early days, like footage of iconic Cunningham company members Gus Solomons jr and Carolyn Brown. But it also unearths the work of lesser-known dance figures, such as Elizabeth Jennerjahn, a choreographer and visual artist whose Light Sound Movement Workshop at Black Mountain College, created with her husband, Pete Jennerjahn, produced multi-genre works that are thought to have influenced Cunningham.
Sean Lopez in The Light Keeper at the 2025 ReVIEWing Black Mountain College International Conference. Photo courtesy BMCM+AC.
Of the works performed as part of the exhibition, some—like Jennie MaryTai Liu’s Living Female Respondent or 53 Yakshiwhich draws inspiration from Cunningham’s use of chance operations—are directly in conversation with the artists of Black Mountain College. Others, like Johnny Loves Johannwhich premiered this month at Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have a less obvious tie-in. A collaboration between Gandelsman and choreographers John Heginbotham, Caili Quan, Jamar Roberts, and Melissa Toogood (a noted Cunningham dancer), the work, sections of which come to the exhibition on December 18, is centered around the violinist’s lauded interpretation of Bach’s cello suites.
Lea Bertucci + Olivia Block creating experimental soundscapes at the exhibition. Photo courtesy BMCM+AC.
Arnal sees the work as a sort of artistic descendant of Black Mountain College. “I often try to think, If Black Mountain College were around today, who would be involved?” he says. “Who are the Merce Cunninghams and John Cages of today? Not everyone who went to Black Mountain ended up being famous, but they were all interested in pushing boundaries and innovation and experimentation.”
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