In 1954, choreographer Merce Cunningham asked Rauschenberg to construct a set that his dancers could move
through. The choreographer later recalled, "I said to Bob, I don’t want you to decorate a dance, but to make something we could use in a dance." With the help of Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg created this work, which marks the beginning of a decade of close collaborations with Cunningham. "We loved that set," the dancer Carolyn Brown would remember. "It was like a little house. . . . Bob was the stage manager, and just before the curtain went up he would spin the shaving mirror on its string, so it would be flashing when we came out."