Trisha Brown

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

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 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 (1973) 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, 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 Water Motor, a complex solo combining elements of three other pieces, she demonstrated a mental and physical vurtuosity 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 series," which included 1980's Opal Loop, 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" series, which used larger, bolder movement phrases to articulate Brown's evolving spacial aesthetics. This led to Newark (1987), Astral Convertible (1989) and Foray Foret (1990) with costumes and sets once again by Rauschenberg.

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.

Works of her (choreographies 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)
• Primary Accumulation (1972)
• Group Primary Accumulation (1973)
• Roof Piece (1973)
• Structured Pieces II (1974)
• Spiral (1974)
• Locus (1975)
• Structured Pieces III (1975)
• Sololos (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 Foret (1990)
• For MG: 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)
• Orfeo (1998)
• Winterreise (2002)
• O Zlozony/O Composite (2004)
• Floor of the Forest (2007)

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