Radiohead remember Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham died on 26 July, aged 90, and Radiohead have written on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, that they are very sad to hear it. He had invited them into his Split Sides project in October 2003, when it premiered in Brooklyn.

Chance was the point of Split Sides. It put music and dance together, with the set, the costumes, the choreography and the music all combined at random.

The night before the show Cunningham had the band round to his apartment. He was, they write, kind and hospitable. He showed them a computer program that produced random sequences of gesture and movement for wire-framed mannequins, like Kraftwerk's robots. On the night itself he showed them that discipline and focus can create the space for an unexpected moment, when something new can suddenly exist: such a contrast to the scripted world of rock.¹