Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance is a film by Charles Atlas which looks at the long creative life of the late genius of American contemporary dance, Merce Cunningham. Since his first dance work in 1942, Cunningham made dances that shocked, delighted, and annoyed. This portrait is packed with rare archive footage of the company, and early company members Carolyn Brown and Remy Charlip talk of the times when they thought nothing of driving a thousand miles to give one performance and drive back to New York again. Cunningham performs an improvisation especially for this film and is seen rehearsing with Mikhail Baryshnikov. The film includes footage of the dance company in excerpts from Pond Way and BIPED.