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Michael Jackson was not the only dance legend to pass away last summer. The King of Pop was in the company of legendary post-modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham, who died July 26.

Having recently celebrated his 90th birthday, Cunningham’s death was not unexpected. In fact, he had unveiled a "Living Legacy Plan" just one month prior. The plan announced that both Cunningham’s dance company and his school would shut down following his death. The company will do one international farewell tour to commemorate the life and work of its namesake.

It is for this reason that I urge you to attend the Sept. 25 performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The company will perform Nearly Ninety, a piece that showcases 13 of the company’s 14 dancers. The program has not been heralded as drastically different from Cunningham’s 200+ previous works, which is precisely why I recommend it. This program holds true to the chance procedures and cacophony that are at the heart of Cunningham’s unique technique.

You may recall that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed at the Krannert Center in 2007, a performance that utilized Apple technology to the fullest. Each audience member was given a preloaded iPod to play on shuffle during the company’s performance of i-Space.

I cannot say that I am Cunningham’s biggest fan; on the contrary, I tend to avoid Cunningham Technique at all costs. However, I was disheartened by the amount of patrons that left his company’s 2007 performance without seeing it in its entirety. Though his work does not coincide with my personal artistic aesthetic, I respect and appreciate his unique contribution to the dance field. I was disappointed that such a large part of the CU community does not.

Whether we like it or not, Merce Cunningham was a choreographic visionary who challenged mainstream perceptions and definitions of modern dance in the 1950s and '60s. His use of chance procedures and lack of narrative structure in performance made and still makes his style incredibly distinct onstage. Cunningham’s work often features auditory collaborations with minimalist musician John Cage, who died at age 79 in 1992.

Onstage Cunningham’s dancers, often clad in monochromatic unitards, embody his movement like it is second nature, like it is as natural as breathing. Having spent a semester attempting to embody the technique myself, I assure you (at least for me) that it is far from innate. It is for this reason that I respect Cunningham’s company all the more.

Throughout my experience in viewing dance, I have found it helpful to keep the following principle in mind: if a performance is difficult to watch, it is likely to be 10 times more difficult to execute; 100 times more difficult to execute well.

Though my statistics are hyperbolic, the principle is concrete. Art is constantly pushing and breaking boundaries, challenging the norm and shocking audiences in modern society, and there is as much room for (what I have referred to as) “difficult” art as there is for art that is traditional and commercial. If artists did not create such a broad spectrum of work, audiences of all genres would have difficulty cementing their aesthetic preferences. When was the last time that “nice” or “okay” Art left a lasting impression?

So give Cunningham’s work a chance, no pun intended. If you love it, you will leave the performance with a sense of fulfillment. If you hate it, you will leave with anger and frustration. In any case, you will leave with an appreciation of the work’s cultural significance and hopefully of the amount of self-confidence it takes to wear a unitard onstage.