The Park Avenue Armory is accustomed to crowds. Art, antiques, and design dealers fill the space throughout the year, hawking their wares to bustling throngs of collectors, while art spectacles — the 2008 Whitney Biennial and Ernesto Neto's dreamy Anthropodino installation — have also recently attracted masses of people. On Wednesday afternoon, another massive group of people flooded the space, though the cavernous hall had never felt more intimate and tranquil.

Thousands had come to the former military venue to celebrate the legacy of the late choreographer Merce Cunningham in a five-hour festival of his work that included performances by the current company and a series of alumni on three stages, which had been set in a diagonal cutting through the space. Above, in the bleachers where generals once watched their parading troops, La Monte Young, Christian Marclay, Meredith Monk, and Christian Wolff, along with a handful of other former Cunningham collaborators, provided musical accompaniment throughout the evening.

The memorial was titled Event, Cunningham’s term for performances in informal or unusual settings that included excerpts of works from across his vast career. The choreographer encouraged audience members to wander through the space for these projects, which proved perfect for the memorial nature of this performance as well. Observers moved through the space, watching Cunningham classics from across the decades — including Canfield (1969), Changing Steps (1975), and Doubles (1984) — and quietly embracing and speaking with old friends as they traveled.

The list of artists, dancers, and musicians that Cunningham worked with over his career would easily stretch into the thousands, though organizers avoided the temptation to flood the stages with dancers. While watching performances on one stage, viewers would hear applause rising from a far corner, signaling the end of another piece. (The large crowds and the arrangement of the stages meant it was impossible to see everything.) Then the current performance would end, and the stage would sit empty for a period, a quiet memorial to what was lost three months ago.

The current company, which will embark on a two-year world tour and then disband, bookended the evening with excerpts from 1970’s Second Hand, as well as other portions of works. However, the evening may have been won by local schoolchildren who paraded boldly onto the stages at the event’s midway point, striking poses in a spirited rendition of Changing Steps (1975). As they marched offstage, one by one, they earned thunderous applause from an audience that had gone silent for the first time all night.