Maggie Smith in the title role of Edna O’Brien’s “Virginia”

The male Nocturne quintet second movement of Justin Peck’s “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes”

Members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in "eyeSpace," the longer version, at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami in 2007. Ben Thacker

Merce Cunningham Event: Performers, including Andrea Weber, front, inhabiting the expanses of Dia:Beacon. Photograph: Stephanie Berger

Andrea Weber, center, and members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing next to a giant metal sculpture by Richard Serra, partly visible at left, in a gallery at Dia:Beacon. Photograph: Stephanie Berger

Members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Dia:Beacon.

Dancers from Boston Ballet in Helen Pickett's "Eventide," a dance for five male-female couples, set to music by Michael Nyman, Jan Garbarek and Philip Glass. Photographs by Michael Lutch.

Damian Smith and members of the San Francisco Ballet performing Margaret Jenkins's "Thread" at the New Works Festival. Photograph: Erik Tomasson.

Gennadi Nedvigin, Joan Boada and Jaime Garcia Castilla in Yuri Possokhov's "Fusion." Photograph: Erik Tomasson

Members of San Francisco Ballet in Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only. Photograph: Erik Tomasson.

Wendy Whelan and Benjamin Millepied in the world premiere of Concerto DSCH. Photo: Paul Kolnik.

Part of Robert Rauschenberg’s set for Merce Cunningham’s Minutiae.

Soledad Barrio with Noche Flamenca

John Cage at Britain’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 1989. Photograph: James Fraser/ Rex Features.

Merce Cunningham’s eyeSpace.