Like fog, a wisp of smoke, seemingly liberated from the laws of gravity and her own body, the dancer twirls through the air. This image, which Trisha Brown came up with for the choir of ghosts in Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, was based on elements from her previous works, in which the American choreographer had explored how simple and everyday movements are altered when placed in new contexts. She had her dancers run down the sides of houses, move along walls or – as she took up once again in L’Orfeo – move through the room carried by others.
This experimentation with gravity shaped the style of Trisha Brown’s choreographies in general. A further example for this is Set and Reset, a piece from 1983, with which she managed to break out on the international scene. Clear geometric spatial structures combine here with a flowing quality of movement that is typical for Trisha Brown. The ceaseless stream of energy on hand recalls waves or a perpetual motion machine.
Instead of being based on storyline, dramaturgy or music, these early, rather abstract works frequently consist of improvisations for which Trisha Brown laid out “rules”. Accumulation begins with nothing but a small gesture, which is repeated initially and then supplemented by other movements. Gradually, a complex choreography takes shape through this process. In other productions, Trisha Brown worked with a handful of movement sequences that she had several dancers perform off-set in both space and time.
Often the performances also took place at unusual locations, such as in parks, former factory floors or even on rooftops, forcing the viewers to find their own stand and view points. For instance, Roof and Fire Piece was a sort of “Chinese Whispers” game, in which dancers distributed on different rooftops adopted the movements of another, repeating them and passing them on to the next dancer.
Like Trisha Brown, various artists in New York in the 1970s attempted to extend the boundaries of modern dance, installation and performance. Like Trisha Brown, some of them also had their own companies. Many of them were associated with the Judson Dance Theater, a loose collective of artists. They worked together in rotating line-ups, dancing to the choreographies of others, developing their own works and being generally open to influences from other creative disciplines, such as music or visual art. Robert Rauschenberg, originally a painter and photographer, also developed his own choreographies and became one of Trisha Brown’s most important and frequent creative partners. Rauschenberg often treated elements of the stage design as if they were performers, having them move for real or simply imply movement. This bundled creativity extended the notion of art for the creators here as much as it did for the audience.
The sustained impact of these efforts became evident in Trisha Brown’s own career: in 2007, she exhibited her own graphic works, video works and variations from Accumulation and Floor of the Forest at the Documenta in Kassel. In Floor of the Forest, a piece from 1970, dancers make their way hand over hand over a grid made of ropes and attempt to climb into pieces of clothing hanging within. In addition to productions for her own company, Trisha Brown also worked at significant theatres, where she consistently succeeded in expanding the perception of both viewers and artists. The female lead of L’Orfeo commented that in the scope of dance and movement rehearsals with Trisha Brown she was able to learn and comprehend things that she had been searching for in vain throughout the previous ten years of her singing career.