A dancer, writer, and choreographer, Carolyn Rice Brown (b. 1927) is best known as one of the founding members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which explores the relationships between movement and beauty while expanding the possibilities of dance, music, and the visual arts as a medium of expression.

Brown’s mother, Marion Rice, was a choreographer, dance teacher and producer who founded the Marion Rice Studio of the Dance and operated her own dance company, the Marion Rice Denishawn Dancers in Fitchburg, Massachusetts where Brown received her early training. She first met Merce Cunningham when she attended a master class in 1951.

Cunningham founded his dance company in the summer of 1953 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Brown, who is described as one of America’s great dancers, emerged as one of the most important female dancers in Cunningham’s company. She appeared in more than 40 of his works—virtually every piece he choreographed—often collaborating with him and musician John Cage.

She danced with Cunningham for 20 years, retiring in 1973. Brown, the recipient of a Dance Magazine Award, five National Endowment for the Arts grants, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a 100th Anniversary Distinguished Service award from Wheaton College, has remained active in retirement as a freelance choreographer, filmmaker, writer, lecturer, and teacher. She has served on the boards of the Merce Cunningham Trust and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

In 2007, Brown published Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham, a memoir recalling the story of her career and the evolution of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

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