Trisha Brown Dance Company

About the Company

Trisha Brown Dance Company has presented the work of its legendary artistic director for more than 37 years. Founded in 1970, when Trisha Brown branched out from the experimental Judson Dance Theater to work with her own group of dancers, TBDC offered its first performances at alternative sites in Manhattan’s SoHo district. Today, the Company is regularly seen in the landmark opera houses of New York, Paris, London, and many other theaters around the world.  The repertory has grown from solos and small group pieces to include evening-length works and important collaborations between Ms. Brown and major visual artists.

Under the direction of the most widely acclaimed choreographer to emerge from the postmodern era, the company of just nine dancers performs regularly at the landmark opera houses of New York, Paris, London, and other theaters around the world.  Trisha Brown likes to create abstract dances of the everyday movements and their methodically formal patterns through clever theatrical inventions.  The dancing is more relaxed; arms hang from shoulders and then whip about purposely.  Brown’s early work was actually performed in silence, but in the ‘90s she began working with classical music (Bach, Monteverdi, Webern).  Now she is exploring the world of motion capture technology where computer software is used to influence the sonic and scenic elements of the dancer’s movements.  Her choreography has become more complex, using more variety- from floor work to lifts, compound interactions, and entangled bodies.

Performances at Northrop

1988, 1991, 2002

Choreography

Trisha Brown caught the public’s attention when she first began showing her work with the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960’s.  Brown changed modern dance forever by pushing the limits with a “hot-bed of dance revolution” as one critic described the movements of the Judson Group.

After founding the Trisha Brown Dance Company in 1970, Brown explored her various complex movement ideas creating her early dances for alternative spaces such as roof tops and walls. Her startling Man Walking Down the Side of a Building created much acclaim as Brown innovated a different method of flying. Wanting to explore her passion for abstract and complex movements, Brown collaborated with various artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Laurie Anderson to develop her first full cycle of work in 1983.

In 1998, Brown co-produced her first opera with the Trisha Brown Dance Company,Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. The group performed to several sold out houses in London, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and New York. Brown had achieved total integration of text, music, and movement and went on to create new productions creating high acclaim, a work of “visceral power,” and “very effective theater,” commented the New York Times.

Trisha Brown has been awarded many awards for her mastery of the arts performances and has been the first woman choreographer to be awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Critic's Comments

“A masterful stoke of theater… a luminous work full of wonders… stunningly beautiful.”-The Washington Times

“Her virtuosic dancers exhibit a quality of movement that is distinctly hers- dartingly quick but so fluid that the body seems a conduit for flowing energy.”-The New York Times 

“Accumulation is a gentle statement of the austerity and sensuousness that define Ms. Brown’s movement.”-The New York Times