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Charles Atlas’ Ocean captures a performance of Merce Cunningham’s extraordinary dance work of the same title, taking place 150 feet below ground on the floor of the Rainbow Granite Quarry in Minnesota.

Cunningham’s choreography features dancers, 150 musicians and an orchestral/electronic score and is an homage to composer John Cage and novelist James Joyce. Similarly, Atlas’ film serves as an ode to his four-decades-long collaboration with Cunningham, who died in 2009, before the film was finished. Atlas’ Ocean celebrates these histories and their relation to the intertwining of video, music and dance.

Charles Atlas, Merce Cunningham, 2011, 100 min