Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham, the avant-garde choreographer whose unorthodox approaches and discoveries throughout a six-decade career made him one of the most important artists of the 20th century, influencing filmmakers and directors as well as choreographers worldwide, died Sunday night, the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation said. He was 90.

With his Merce Cunningham Dance Company, founded in New York in 1953, Mr. Cunningham collaborated with composer John Cage (with whom he also had a romantic partnership) and painters Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and other major figures in the modern art world. He created a body of work that looks like none other -- plotless, spacious and often leisurely paced works, characterized by the clarity, calm and coolness of the dancing.

He also developed an elegant and rigorous dance technique based on ballet's pulled-up stretchiness, the weightedness he absorbed from Martha Graham, with whom he danced before striking out on his own, and his own ways of twisting, folding and releasing the body. Where other choreographers looked to music and their own imagination for inspiration, Mr. Cunningham favored the creative strategies of a physicist, a Vegas high roller and a techno-whiz.