We were blown away by Trisha Brown’s performance a couple of weeks ago. She presented works from 1968, 1979, 2004, and a world premier. The work was incredibly diverse; each piece revealing an unique way to see and hear the dance and score. The world premier and finale, L’Amour au theatre, was an incredibly joyous piece, harmonizing fantastically creative and intricate partnering with the intricately layered music of Rameau. I am sure that the whole house must have been smiling while watching and hearing that piece. Incredible!
Not everyone was smiling though.. I stumbled upon the CounterCritic’s and Alaster Macaulay’s reviews of the same show; they found her work to be without “toughness or rigor of mind or technique” and lacking “seriousness”. This seemed, to me, to be a grossly unfair comment regarding Trisha Brown’s work.. this bothered me enough for me to respond and share my thoughts about this show.
The following are the links to their reviews:
CounterCritic: Intervention (aka, Save me Trisha Brown)
NYT Alastair Macaulay
These are my comments on the CounterCritic site:
You definitely need an intervention! I do hope you can see your way out of this funk; I find your view and Alastair Macaulay’s view of dance to be very short sighted. Dance, like music, can be beautiful whether its content is “consistent”, “inconsistent”, “disturbing”, or “undisturbing”; both life wrenching blues and minimalist music can be beautiful and moving.
Speaking of music, I find it amazing that neither you nor Mr. Macaulay, talked about music and score in TB’s work; it was a major element in the show.
To me, the selected pieces show Trisha Brown’s development of the relationship between dance movement and dance score. It seems to me that TB, in her early work, worked with visual/graphic rhythms to free her movements from the tyranny of music. In her new works, music is brought back, not as a tyrant, but as a collaborator. The pieces selected shows how her work with the score has greatly expanded her expression of movement. Her body of work is not without “toughness or rigor of mind or technique”. If both you and Mr. Macaulay look carefully at her work, I would think that you would see that she continues to challenge herself and evolve.
The following are some of my observations regarding the relationship between the score and the movement for each piece:
Planes, photo from www.trishabrowncompany.org
Planes (1968):
Here the active score is Jud Yalkut’s film collage of various elements relating to scale and gravity (the changing scale of the view of the earth as seen from a rocket launch, views of the expanding universe, views of the human figure as seen from toe level through a fish eye lense, microscopic views of sperm heading towards an egg, macroscopic views of the stars of the universe).
Climbing on a wall, the dancers need to find a foothold so that they can advance and suspend themselves against gravity; their physical movement is very limited. Visually, however, their movements appear to be quite expansive; the video, by changing scale and moving dynamically, constantly shift and morph their bodies and shadows. I find this relationship of physically restricted movement and visually expansive movement especially poetic for a piece from that particular time period (advances in science, space exploration, etc.). The dancer’s insecurities/indecisions of the movement, in trying to obtain a secure hold, also speaks to that time.
There is an atmospheric sound piece by Simone Forti that behave much as the dancers. The range of sound is very limited and narrow, however the form and relationship of the sound shifts depending on the video image that is being shown.
O zlozony/O composite, photo from www.bam.org
O zlozony/O composite (2004):
Here the score is provided by Laurie Anderson. The score can be broken down into three basic elements: a woman’s vocal, one base beat/rhythm, and another base beat/rhythm. Here, there is a correlation between the dancer and the music: one woman, two men and one female vocal, two base/rhythms. The music and dancers, however, are not interlinked; when the woman is dancing with the two men, it does not necessarily mean there will be accompanying music consisting of the woman’s vocal and the two base beats. The dancers’ move at times synchronously with the music and at times independently. There is in reality two pas de trois occurring at the same time; sometimes the pas de trois decides to sync, sometimes they counter and overlap each other. This independent coexistence of dance movement and music can also be seen at the smaller scale of the individual dancer to the music.
Here the Vija Celmins' starry backdrop works wonderfully to allow for Laurie Anderson's score to float in space. Unlike Plane's and Glacial Decoy, the visual artwork is no longer active, it works together with the music to create the atmosphere of the dance.
How Alastair Macaulay can compare this piece to Frederick Ashton’s Monotones is beyond me. The comparison is purely superficial and irrelevant. If we look at both dances as dance pieces (and not as individual dance movements), how can one judge “O zlozony/O composite” to be “on the waffly side” in comparison to “Monotones”?
Glacial Decoy, photo from www.bam.org
Glacial Decoy (1979):
Rauschenberg score: slides as visual time marker, keeping very regular time. The photos are of objects and things. Maybe these object and things evoke feelings and memories; definitely, these objects and things have a composition (textures, density of lines, openness of space, areas of really dark and areas of really light, etc). This moving visual composition is the score that the dancers dance in front of.
The slides are repeated in the background, however, they shift. The dancers’ movement repeat and mimic each other from one side of the stage to another. In the photos and in the dancers, there is this shifting of the copies.. of duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate. The costumes are translucent overlays on the form of the body; it slides, shifting, following the dancers. The costumes render much like the ghostly photo transfer collage work of Rauschenberg.
Is there a relationship between the choreography of the dance and Rauschenberg ghostly photo transfer collage art work?
L'Amour au theatre, photo by Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
L’Amour au theatre (2009):
Here excerpts from Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie” are used as the score. Here, the music is a central figure continuously present (unlike O zlozony/O composite). Musically it is also much more layered and intricate; additionally, there is a layer of story (a hunt on horse back, there are nautical themes).
TB pulls off a very intricate and subtle relationship between the dance movement and music. The variety of movements rivals that of the layered variety of sounds, here however, the syncing/unsyncing of the movement and the music is much finer. This close, true collaboration of the score and movement begin to allow you to see the richly layered space between the beats and rhythms of the music and hear the music flowing within the dance movements.
I felt compelled to respond to both you and Mr. Macaulay as I felt TB’s work was being really short-changed by both your reviews; I felt these attacks on her rigor and seriousness was undeserving. I hope my comments are convincing enough to persuade you to revisit your thoughts on Trisha Brown and her work. Hopefully it will; I would love to hear what you think. I do appreciate that you are posting and keeping this forum open for the exchange of ideas. Much thanks!
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www.dancememo.wordpress.com
Tags: Trisha Brown BAM Alastair Macaulay CounterCritic Reviews
