A Trisha Brown weekend at the ICA
This weekend offers a unique opportunity to fully experience the work of one of the greatest choreographers of our time—the legendary Trisha Brown.
Brown first came to public notice when she began showing her work with the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. Along with artists including Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, and Simone Forte, she pushed the limits of what could be considered appropriate movement for choreography, thereby changing modern dance forever.
The Dance/Draw exhibition includes Brown’s drawings as well as her 1970 performance Floor of the Forest (see performance schedule here).
What comes across very powerfully in Dance/Draw is the strength of Brown’s artistic influence on her peers as well as on a new generation of artists. Works by Babette Mangolte and Charles Gaines directly capture the experience of Brown’s performances, while works by Rashaad Newsome, Klara Liden and Juan Capistran reveal her impact on a younger generation of artists.
From Nov. 11-13, the Trisha Brown Dance Company will perform a selection of works spanning the company’s 40-year history at the ICA. This is the first time the Company has performed in Boston in over a decade! Here is what will be included in the program:
Water Motor (1978)
A virtuostic solo performance, Water Motor is “is all detail and nuance in a foot-pawing, wrist-flicking dance in which [the dancer] seems to turn herself inside out (New York Times).” Babette Mangolte, whose photographs of Trisha Brown performances are on view in Dance/Draw, filmed one of Brown’s early performances of Water Motor in 1978. “I was stunned when I saw it,” writes Mangolte on her website. “Not only was it absolutely thrilling but I also felt it was an enormous departure from the movement in her previous piece Locus. Somehow you could hardly see the movement (dance) because it just went too fast. It was totally new.” Mangolte recounts the fascinating story and process behind the filming of Water Motor here.
Opal Loop (1980)
Opal Loop is the earliest of Brown’s first fully developed cycle of work, Unstable Molecular Structures. Four dancers perform in silence, twisting and turning in a fluid, yet unpredictably geometric style that Brown developed in the early 1980s and which remains a hallmark of her work.
Foray Forêt (1990)
Foray Forêt marked Brown’s final collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg, whom she had been working with since the late 1970s. Rauschenberg created the visual design and the metallic gold costumes for Foray Forêt. This work includes a memorable, offstage performance by a traditional marching band (in our case, the Lexington Marching Band). We hear the volume of their music fading in and out as they move around different parts of the theater, but the band itself always remains out of sight. Foray Forêt marks the beginning of a new phase in Brown’s work, in which she pulled back from athleticism and external virtuosity to investigate unconscious movement.
Les Yeux et l’âme (2011)
Les Yeux et l’âme is a dance work from the production of Rameau’s mid-18th-century opera Pygmalion. The piece is based on the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses about a sculptor who carves a woman out of ivory and then falls in love with her. The title is French for “the eyes and the soul.’’ This, Brown says, “is a variation of what the statue says to Pygmalion when she comes to life: ‘I can see in your eyes what I feel in my soul.’ "
Watch a video including excerpts of all these works: