Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers train their bodies, remains pervasively impactful within international postmodern dance.
Early life and education
Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1936, 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, José Limón, and Merce Cunningham at the American Dance Festival, then held at Connecticut College.Work
Dance
In 1960 Brown participated in an experimental workshop devoted to improvisation at the studio of Anna Halprin, in Kentfield, California. Subsequently, at the urging of fellow choreographers, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, Brown moved to New York to study composition with Robert Dunn, who taught a class at Merce Cunningham's studio, based on John Cage's theories of chance.After moving to New York City 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, Steve Paxton, Twyla Tharp, Lucinda Childs, and David Gordon. She also joined a composition class led by Robert Dunn, a musician from the Merce Cunningham dance studio who was interested in applying the musical ideas of John Cage to dance.
In the late 1960s Brown created her own works which attempted to defy gravity, using equipment such as ropes and harnesses, to allow dancers to walk on or down walls or to experiment with the dynamics of stability. These "equipment pieces" were the first dances to comprise a distinct series in what would become a working method for Brown as she went on to create various "cycles" of dances throughout her career. Brown's early works Walking on the Wall and Roof Piece were designed to be performed at specific sites.
Brown’s exploration of gravity-defying concepts began with works like Planés, which was notable for its use of rock climbing equipment, allowing dancers to “scale” performance walls, altering the viewer’s perception of gravity and verticality. In Rulegame 5, she further experimented with rules and improvisational structures, creating a game-like experience where dancers followed a set of instructions that often produced surprising, humorous moments. Brown’s work Yellowbelly included interaction with the audience, inviting them to vocalize during the performance, a radical break from traditional dance spectator roles and a push toward democratizing the performance experience.
In 1970 Brown cofounded the Grand Union, an experimental dance collective, and formed the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Accumulation, 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.
Brown’s Accumulation series became an iconic representation of her choreographic process, utilizing simple, repetitive gestures that built up over time, forming complex patterns and sequences. In Group Primary Accumulation, Brown emphasized these basic movements by arranging dancers in a grid-like formation, allowing the audience to observe the subtle changes and additions to each movement. This cycle of works reflected her commitment to anti-expressivity and the belief that dance could convey ideas without traditional emotive or narrative structures. Locus marked her further departure from narrative by using an imaginary cube around each dancer as a spatial reference point, assigning letters from autobiographical texts to these points and creating movement sequences based on this code. This approach brought a formal, almost scientific dimension to her choreography, embodying the principles of postmodern dance.
During the 1980s Brown produced large-scale works intended for the stage and began her artistic collaborations, beginning with Glacial Decoy 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, Son of Gone Fishin' and another collaboration with Rauschenberg, Set and Reset, featuring a score by performance artist Laurie Anderson and a set design by Rauschenberg, solidified Brown's stature as an innovator within the dance world and as an artist of global significance. Three screens simultaneously broadcast separate black and white film collages from five 16 millimeter projectors, while the dancers rippled around the stage in part-translucent costumes marked with gray and black figures that resembled newsprint.
In Opal Loop, Brown collaborated with Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, who created a fog installation for the stage, enveloping dancers in clouds that blurred their movements and created a mysterious, ethereal atmosphere. Brown’s later piece, Son of Gone Fishin’, introduced even more complexity by weaving different movement phrases in canon, with dancers performing independent sequences that occasionally converged, highlighting Brown’s interest in intricate timing and spatial relationships. Her Set and Reset, a signature collaboration with Rauschenberg and Anderson, combined improvisational structures with rigorous composition, resulting in a visually and kinetically layered piece that showcased Brown’s ability to blend dance, art, and music seamlessly. The work’s intricate, spiraling choreography and distinctive use of translucent costumes allowed dancers to appear as if they were in continuous motion, further elevating Brown’s aesthetic of unpredictability and flow.
Unlike Merce Cunningham and John Cage, who worked separately on projects and left it to the viewer to put the elements together, Brown and her collaborators worked toward a shared vision.
Sculptor Nancy Graves designed the set for Lateral Pass,, which began Brown's Valiant cycle. It used a larger pad, bolder movement phrases to articulate Brown's evolving spatial aesthetics. This led to Newark, with decor and a sound concept by Donald Judd. For Astral Convertible and Foray Forêt, costumes and sets were once again made by Rauschenberg. Astral Convertible, in particular, originally was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of a major Robert Rauschenberg exhibition in 1991 and presented on the museum's steps, overlooking the National Mall. Performances of Foray Forêt include local marching bands from the presenting city. For M. G. is sculptural and kinetic, opening with a dancer running in figure-eight circles around the stage, slowing into loping motion down the center.
In Astral Convertible, Brown explored the relationship between technology and dance by using Rauschenberg’s light towers that responded to the dancers’ movements, creating a dynamic interplay between light and motion. This piece reflected Brown’s growing interest in how non-dance elements, such as light and sound, could become active participants in choreography. Foray Forêt, another collaboration with Rauschenberg, included a live marching band whose music was occasionally audible to the audience, emphasizing Brown’s fascination with unpredictability and how external sounds could shape the audience’s perception. For M.G., dedicated to Michel Guy, integrated sculptural elements with its choreography, as dancers moved through the stage space in complex patterns, embodying Brown’s fascination with motion as both a visual and spatial form.
In You Can See Us, she performed together with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1996. Also in a mirror duet drawn from a solo, If You Couldn't See Me, Brown performed entirely with her back to the audience for ten minutes with an electronic "sound score" on a bare stage.
In the 1990s she also turned more to choreographing classical music, creating M.O. based on the Musical Offering by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and the opera production of L'Orfeo by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. Brown found inspiration in jazz for El Trilogy, completed her second opera, Luci mie traditrici in 2001, and in 2002 choreographed the song cycle Die Winterreise by Austrian composer Franz Schubert for 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's first male dancer in 1979. Brown choreographed her last piece in 2011.
In her later years, Brown explored classical music as an influence, choreographing M.O., set to Bach’s Musical Offering, where her movements mirrored the intricate structures of Baroque music. Twelve Ton Rose, based on the twelve-tone compositions of Anton Webern, showcased Brown’s fascination with formal structures and abstract musicality, with the choreography closely mirroring Webern’s innovative musical principles.