Jupiter
Artland until September 29
Four
stars
A
ballroom is the perfect place to witness the wonders of Trisha Brown, the
American choreographer who did so much to push the boundaries of contemporary
dance from the 1960s right up until her death in 2017, aged eighty. So it goes
for this first UK showing of Brown’s extensive archive of filmed performances,
as anyone passing in the garden should be able to hear.
Depending
on timing, they’ll either get the loft-friendly electronics of Laurie
Anderson’s Long Time No See that accompanies 1985’s seven dancer work, Set and
Reset, Version 1, or else the more classically inclined selections from
Pygmalion by Jean-Philippe Rameau that go with Les Yeux et l’ame (2011). While
the former features costumes by visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, the latter,
part of a fortieth anniversary celebration of Brown’s work, sees eight dancers
show off the work of an elder stateswoman at her peak. In both, for all the
work’s seriousness, judging by the dancers’ faces, there’s clearly much fun to
be had.
This
attitude goes right back to the earliest short films housed in the Foundry
Gallery. There’s a primal purity and child-like joy to Brown’s solo rope-play
in Ballet (1968), Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970) and Walking on
the Wall (1971). These were the formative years of Trisha Brown Dance Company,
when a dilapidated New York was an adventure playground for the taking.
The
sixteen films on show skip across the decades, just as a selection of Brown’s
drawings take a line for a dance, while photographs capture her in full flight.
Audiences can witness a sense of this first-hand when Trisha Brown Dance
Company visit Jupiter Artland to perform In Plain Site. This commission for Edinburgh
International Festival will see the company reconceive some of Brown’s short
works against the outdoor backdrop of three of the sculpture park’s permanent
environmental interventions. It should be worth taking the leap for.
The List, August 2019
ends
Comments