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Marilyn Wood Obituary
Marilyn Wood, a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company who went on to a ground breaking career as a "choreographer of cities," died peacefully on June 16.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Marilyn spent many childhood years in Puerto Rico. While attending Oberlin College, she initially imagined a career in the visual arts, architecture and design. However, she experienced an epiphany during a college dance class that awakened her to the idea that in dance, she could "be the sculpture" -- a revelation that motivated a life-long passion for dance. After college, she joined the Alvin Nikolais Dance Company at the Henry Street Playhouse in New York City, where she performed for 6 years. As a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, she toured with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and the company, performing legendary master works of the golden age of early modern dance from 1958 to 1963.
In 1968 she formed Marilyn Wood and the Celebration Group, which joined dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, architects, and musicians to create the first-ever site-specific performances called "Celebrations in City Places". The iconic celebration of the Seagram Building, broadly unveiled her talents. Her choreography activated all 38 stories of the building's façade, the lobby, and the plaza, and featured 35 dancers inside and outside, original music, film projection, and participation, bringing the audience to dance on the plaza as part of the grand finale. The critical success of the Seagram Project earned her a coveted honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects, and launched her highly acclaimed international career creating major celebrations for numerous US cities (Charlotte, Kansas City, Columbus, Little Rock, Tulsa and Denver) and globally, in Berlin, Singapore, Teheran, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Adelaide, and many others. Her "choreographed cities" were always free, visible and accessible to the public. The choreography was inspired by the site, the local dancers and artists of all types in addition to an entourage of artists and dancers from around the world.
Moving to Santa Fe in 1987, Marilyn founded the International Center for Celebration (ICC), a global network of artists whose innovative forms embraced the spirit, scale, and energy of the environmental and cultural venues of each site. ICC received many grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Marilyn as the recipient of its first Creative Artist Fellowship, funding a yearlong study of festivals in Japan. In 2013, the American Dance Guild honored Marilyn with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Marilyn leaves behind three daughters: Leslie Wood (Jon Strom), Kathy Dean, and Hilary Thompson (Ray); 7 grandchildren; one great grandson; a brother, Toby Riley, and a sister, Jonda McFarlane; and many dear and loving friends. She was married to musician Robert Wood for 33 years.
It was Marilyn's wish in lieu of flowers to donate to her grandson Ryan Thompson's College Fund, 42 N. Moore St. #4, NYC 10013.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Memories and Condolences
for Marilyn Wood
Sasha Yunkers
April 8, 2025
I had my fist dance classes when I was five years old with Marilyn at downtown community school. She was a remarkable woman, teacher and dancer.She gave me the great gift of believing in me and all her students giving us the courage to explore our selves and the art form! In deepest appreciation. Sasha Yunkers
Diana Marto
June 24, 2024
It's now 2024, I'm about to Celebrate my 80 th. birthday by inviting a coterie of dancers, artists, musicians to create site specific performances in a stunning sculpture garden over looking the Pacific that honors Marilyn's artistic vision. Deep gratitude to her for planting the seeds in the Landmark in Hong Kong, at the last UN NGO Habitat II Forum in Istanbul, at Chatal Hoyuck, in Santa Fe, in the feminization of public space. The attached image is a gallery window display in Fort Bragg, CA. "Truth" is written on the egg in the forefront.
Daryl Ries
June 21, 2022
To her daughters Hilary Leslie and Kathy and their families... Wish you all well ..in loving memory of Marilyn ...as I´m soon to be 80 I´m celebrating with a return trip to Asia. And will be there with happy memories of Marilyn.X
Daryl Ries
June 21, 2021
Missing Marilyn ! The photo of us ascending the staircase at The Landmark in Hong Kong following her Celebration Opening there in 1982 stays perched on my desk reminding me of our collaborations and friendship over many years.Best Regards to Hilary,Ray, and Leslie and Kathy.from Daryl in Woodstock NY and Coronado,Panama
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Daryl Ries
June 21, 2020
Ever present Ever powerful Forever memorable!
Daryl Ries
June 21, 2019
Marilyn is not someone you could ever forget once she touched your life.She was a mentor who shared her artistic exuberance and experience that ripples today thru out the world. She and Frances Alenikoff collaborated with me in Hong Kong in the early 80's bringing a creative energy with new visions that propelled the budding arts scene. I will always be grateful.
Ron Garrison
April 8, 2017
Thanks to Marilyn I went to Berlin and Singapore to collaborate in her work. It was so much fun and so rewarding. Visiting the sites would stimulate tons of ideas, and then we would work to figure out how to accomplish our dreams. The end result was always bigger than we dreamed. Thanks Marilyn. You changed my life.
Dancing at Millineum Park, Chicago
Kimberly Wilczak
August 2, 2016
I had the pleasure of speaking on the phone with Marilyn Wood for 2 hours of her life last December. The reason we were conversing last winter was to speak about her work as a City Celebrationist. I am a landscape architect and dancer who could hardly believe this remarkable lady existed. I was thrilled to hear how she had succeeded. Moreover, I was deeply moved by her supportive words to go forward with my very similar trajectory of dance in public spaces that I call Landscape Choreography. Marilyn's warm, very present voice, and fortifying words will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ms. Wood told me about her early days with Merce Cunningham and having twins and another daughter with her supportive husband who encouraged her as she brought her vision of City Celebrations to life in the United States and abroad. Her voice was captivating as were her anecdotes. I was caught up in the locations highlighted in her stories such as being born in Columbus, Ohio; producing one of her first architecture-based dances at a train station in Kansas City, Missouri; and visiting one of her now grown up children in NY. As I listened, I couldn't help widening my eyes as I realized how many of these places held importance for me as well. I was adopted from Seoul, South Korea and arrived at 9 months of age to Kansas City; Ithaca, NY in upstate New York was my home for university studies; and I currently reside in Columbus, Ohio where I study dance at OSU.
One of the key points that Marilyn accentuated about her work was participation. She described how she always brought the audience into her event's architectural spaces (often with live drumming) and that by the end of an evening everyone was dancing. She emphasized that she wanted to encourage participation over consumerism.
Marilyn went on to tell me that she was currently developing her archives in her New Mexico home. I want to encourage that process. More people need to know about this pioneering woman. Her talents and energy constructed community events that have the power to bond people to each other, and to the places where they live their lives. I believe her work directly contributed to building world peace.
Please contact me if I may help to build her archives or contribute to her legacy in other ways. For now, I will go forward in the spirit of Marilyn's foundational work, with Landscape Choreography. I am deeply thankful to have spoken with her.
-Kim Wilczak (717-330-3900, [email protected])
Nora Goldberg
July 2, 2016
She gave me one of my first jobs, and I spent some amazing time at her home. She gave me a great appreciation for art, dance, and Brazilian music. She helped to teach me patience, the skill of dictation, and instructions that come with the printer are useless.
Brian Sherman
June 30, 2016
My condolences to Marilyn's family and friends. I was a founding member of the Celebrations Group. I danced in the windows and revolving doors of the Seagram's Building during that celebration and I danced in a piece at SUNY Purchase during which we shared the choreography one-on-one with blindfolded members of the audience.
I met Marilyn in 1971 when we needed someone to teach the Body Movement section of the Workshop on the Creative Process at Richmond College [later subsumed into the College of Staten Island]. I was a sociology instructor at RC. I attended the workshop; Marilyn was a wonderful teacher. From her I learned how dancers study an architectural space with their bodies; I learned the technique of "scoring" to create artistic happenings using movement, sounds, and props; and I learned to think of everyone as a dancer, including myself. Marilyn said she got the idea of scoring from a west coast composer, perhaps Amirkhanian.
I didn't have time to stay in the Celebrations Group but I enjoyed many of their subsequent performances in such sites as Battery Park and the Lincoln Center plaza before I left NYC for Atlanta in 1976. I liked the frisson of anticipation of the emergence of the CG with some kind of flowing motions accented by banners, flags or similar material. I hope there's an archive somewhere of photos, film, and videos of the CG. The Celebrations Group was so important to me I think I can still remember the names of all 18 of the main dancers at Seagram's. 9 women: Nanette Sievert, Alexandra Ogsbury, Robert Escamilla Garrison [her spouse was "James" -- Trane's great bassist] Fran [I can't recall her surname], Norma Standing {a student at Richmond College}, Pat Usachowska [sp?], Connie [I don't remember her surname: Bailey?],Karen Bacon [the actor's sister], and of course Marilyn + nine men: Nelson Howe, three students from Richmond College -- Richard Burke, Tony Nunziata, & Lance Luria --, Kevin [I can't recall his surname], Bob Cheasty, Tedrian Chizik, Alex Moir, and me. I also remember Bob Wood, Marilyn's husband, who brought his home-made xylophones for everyone to mallet on at several of Charlotte Moorman's Annual Avant-Garde festivals. With her ideas about movement, about spaces, and about bodies in cities Marilyn widened and deepened our esthetic experience and our knowledge of environments. She mattered!
Daryl Ries
June 28, 2016
Marilyn and I met in Hong Kong.I was called into the Government Office of Admin.for the Arts,to meet a woman who wanted to stage a mega city performance,and in 1983,this was a very strange request indeed,but well timed for the opening of the grand Landmark Mall."Celebrations" was launched with official approval and with her flare and fiery devotion,Marilyn created a spectacular event,opening doors for local artists and cultivating a new audience..a needed boost to the cultural scene of this city.And so Marilyn made her mark in Asia and we shared the experience that would be a bond for many,many years on. I bid adieu with saddened heart to a wonderful woman who brought so much to so many. Daryl
West St.
Catherine Gallant
June 27, 2016
Marilyn was a dynamic artist who could make magic in an instant. Her fabulous verticality and capacity for quickness, even at a later age, was remarkable. She was truly ahead of her time with her vision of dance in the built environment. I admired her openess. She was an excellent storyteller. So happy to have known her, her work and her family.
Hilary Thompson
June 27, 2016
Loved her greatly. Still do
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