THE TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY

The Trisha Brown Dance Company opened at the Joyce Theater with Glacial Decoy (1979), Brown’s first collaboration with visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, and her first work for the proscenium stage.  Trisha Brown, a postmodern ground-breaker, enjoyed a history with Grand Union and the Judson Dance Theater in the 60’s and 70’s, and had heretofore created site specific experimentations in downtown Manhattan. This first work for the stage opens to ambient sound with Rauschenberg’s four large canvases as backdrop; projections of black and white photos of pedestrian objects and nature images pass by: lightbulbs, bicycle seats, brick buildings, waterfalls; images shift and reposition rhythmically throughout the piece.

One dancer appears stage left in a sheer gauzy white dress (Rauschenberg design) introducing Brown’s quirky choreography, disappearing as another enters stage right — as if the dance might be happening off stage as well. The work progresses as dancers execute mounting virtuosic and eccentric movement. Four ethereal “white clouds” (Cecily Campbell, Catherine Kirk, Ashley Merker, Jennifer Payan, and an occasional Lindsey Jones as a fifth in the quartet), appear and disappear in various combinations. Seeing this re-staging reminds us of how much Brown influenced the culture, and how we take for granted now, what was once and still is unique, rebellious, and completely original. 

In the Fall (2023), a premiere and commissioned work by Noé Soulier (current director of the Center national de danse contemporaine in Angers) begins with dark lighting (Victor Burel and Noé Soulier) on a silent, sober stage featuring two dancers, male and female: she, upside down on shoulders with legs suspended in the air; he, in arabesque, balancing, sustaining slowly, falling, positions interrupting planes. Various combinations of groupings develop, two balancing as one while Florian Hecker’s ambient sound creeps in: clanging, scraping agitation, until finally, eight dancers, two in red, four in blue, two in yellow (costumes by Kaye Voyce) fill the stage with combinations of intertwining complex floor patterns, until ending with one dancer balancing in the original arabesque before falling to the ground. Soulier experiments with slowing the body down, stretching its capabilities of suspension and balance, raising a question for the future… “Does he have to stay with the legacy of the Trisha Brown Company? “

The final work of the evening, Working Title (1985), is the only piece on this program that offers the audience an emotional rapport. Eight dancers are dressed in playful tops and bottoms of various designs: plaids, big horizontal stripes, colorful pants (imaginative costumes by Elizabeth Cannon). Peter Zummo’s riveting score, played by Mustafa Ahmed, Guy Klucevsek, Arthur Russell, Bill Rule, and Zummo on trombone, contribute a lively sound landscape as the cast cavorts and plays with momentum and release, partnering with quicksilver changes, spontaneous and joyful. This inspired cast: Christian Allen, Cecily Campbell, Savannah Gaillard, Lindsey Jones, Burr Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Patrick Needham, and Jennifer Payan, separate then blend in this rigorous work. Eight parts add up to a greater whole, transporting Brown’s early work into the present, with sophistication and elegance.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman