Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown (25 November 1936, Aberdeen, Washington, U.S.) is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.

Life and career

Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance Festival, then held at Connecticut College. After moving to New York in 1961, Brown trained with dancer Anna Halprin and became a founding member of the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater in 1962. There she worked with experimental dancers Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton. In 1970 she cofounded the Grand Union, an experimental dance collective, and formed the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Her company soon became one of the leading contemporary dance ensembles. Brown received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1991.

Brown’s early works Walking on the Wall (1971) and Roof Piece (1971) were designed to be performed at specific sites. Accumulation (1971), which is executed with the dancers on their backs, has been performed in public spaces of all kinds, including on water, with the dancers floating on rafts as they methodically work through the piece's graduated gestures. Walking on the Wall involved dancers in harnesses moving along a wall, while Roof Piece took place on 12 different rooftops over a ten-block area in New York City's SoHo, with each dancer transmitting the movements to a dancer on the nearest roof. In 1974, Brown began a residential relationship with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, that has continued to this day. With 1978's Accumulation with Talking plus Watermotor, a complex solo combining elements of three other pieces, she demonstrated a mental and physical virtuosity seldom seen in the dance world, then or now. Brown's rigorous structures, combined with pedestrian or simple movement styles and tongue-in-cheek humor brought an intellectual sensibility that challenged the mainstream "modern dance" mindset of this period.

During the 1980s Brown produced large-scale works intended for the stage, beginning with Glacial Decoy (1979) which had sets and costumes by artist Robert Rauschenberg. This period was most notable for the slithery and highly articulated movement style which characterized much of her work during this time. The Molecular Structure cycle, which included Opal Loop (1980), Son of Gone Fishin' (1981) and another collaboration with Rauschenberg, Set and Reset (1983), featuring a score by performance artist Laurie Anderson, solidified Brown's stature as an innovator within the dance world and as an artist of global significance.

1985's Lateral Pass began her Valiant cycle, which used larger, bolder movement phrases to articulate Brown's evolving spacial aesthetics. This led to Newark (1987), Astral Convertible (1989) and Foray Forêt (1990) with costumes and sets once again by Rauschenberg. Performances of Foray Forêt include local marching bands from the presenting city.

Brown has continued to explore the nature of motion and to choreograph dances based on everyday movements. Her style has developed from carefully built-up, repetitive gestures to its current fluid virtuosity. In the 1990s she turned to choreographing classical music, creating M.O. (1995) based on the Musical Offering by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and her first opera production, Orfeo (1998) by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. Brown found inspiration in jazz for El Trilogy (1998–2000), completed her second opera, Luci mie traditrici (composed by Salvatore Sciarrino) in 2001, and in 2002 choreographed the song cycle Die Winterreise (Winter’s Journey) by Austrian composer Franz Schubert for English baritone Simon Keenlyside. Brown worked again with Laurie Anderson in 2004 on O Zlozony/O Composite for the Paris Opera Ballet. Among her well-known disciples are Diane Madden and Stephen Petronio.

Brown was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2000.

In 2002, Trisha Brown was awarded the National Medal of Arts and in 2005 she won the Prix Benois de la Danse for lifetime achievement.

Works of her choreography and drawings are included in documenta 12.

Works

Her works include:

• Homemade (1966)
• Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970)
• Floor of the Forest (1970)
• Leaning Duets (1970)
• Accumulation (1971)
• Walking on the Wall (1971)
• Roof Piece (1971)
• Primary Accumulation (1972)
• Group Primary Accumulation (1973)
• Structured Pieces II (1974)
• Spiral (1974)
• Locus (1975)
• Structured Pieces III (1975)
• Solo Olos (1976)
• Line Up (1976)
• Spanish Dance' (1976)
• Watermotor (1978)
• Accumulation with Talking plus Watermotor (1978)
• Glacial Decoy (1979)
• Opal Loop (1980)
• Son of Gone Fishin' (1981)
• Set and Reset (1983)
• Lateral Pass (1985)
• Newark (1987)
• Astral Convertible (1989)
• Foray Forêt (1990)
• For M.G.: The Movie (1991)
• One Story as in falling (1992)
• Another Story as in falling (1993)
• If you couldn't see me (1994)
• M.O. (1995)
• Twelve Ton Rose (1996)
• L'Orfeo (1998)
• Winterreise (2002)
• PRESENT TENSE (2003)
• O Zlozony/O Composite (2004)
• How long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume... (2005)
• I love my robots (2007)
• L'Amour au Theatre (2009)
• Pygmalion (2010)

Bibliography

• Rossella Mazzaglia, Trisha Brown. Palermo, L'Epos, 2007. ISBN 978-88-8302-329-3

External links

• http://www.trishabrowncompany.org/
• http://www.gradewinner.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_n4_v69/ai_16985498?pi=gdw#continue
• Archival footage of Trisha Brown Dance Company performing Set and Reset in 1986 at Jacob's Pillow
• Archival footage of Trisha Brown Dance Company performing Les Yeux et L'Ame in 2011 at Jacob's Pillow