Investigating Theatricality in Trisha Brown’s Work: Five Unstudied Dances, 1966–1969

Susan Rosenberg

doi:10.3390/arts10020031

Abstract

Trisha Brown (1936–2017) forged her artistic identity as part of Judson Dance Theater, which embraced everyday pedestrian movement as dance. Between 1966 and 1969, Brown’s work took a surprisingly theatrical turn. Five unstudied dances from this period reflect concerns with autobiography, psychology, and catharsis, influences of her exposure to trends in Gestalt therapy and dance therapy during a sojourn in California (1963–1965). Brown let these works fall from her repertory because she did not consider them to qualify as ‘art’. Close readings of these works shed light on a period in Brown’s career before she rejected subjectivity as the basis for her creative process prior to her consolidation of her identity as an abstract choreographer in the 1970s and 1980s, while raising intriguing questions as to Brown’s late-career devotion to exploring emotion, drama and empathy in the operas and song cycle that she directed between 1998 and 2003.

Highlights

Between 1966 and 1969, choreographer Trisha Brown (1936–2017) created a small body of dances whose basis in subjective experience lent them a theatrical flair quite different from other works in Brown’s oeuvre
Looking back on a brief period of Brown’s beginnings as an artist when personal narrative and emotion impregnated her dances sheds light on Brown’s astonishing late-career devotion to creating operas: in the interim (1970–1987), she closely adhered to an abstract aesthetic
Following her 1987 contribution to Lina Wertmuller’s direction of Bizet’s Carmen (1875) at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, Brown tentatively explored the introduction of character and narrative into her abstract works—a process that culminated in her creation of an abstract-representational movement syntax developed while directing significant operas and an important song cycle Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) in 1998; Salvatore Sciarrino’s original libretto and music Luci Mie Traditrici (2001) and Franz

Summary

Introduction

Between 1966 and 1969, choreographer Trisha Brown (1936–2017) created a small body of dances whose basis in subjective experience lent them a theatrical flair quite different from other works in Brown’s oeuvre. Brown: Dances and Performance Pieces: 1960–1975—an invaluable record of remembrances by Brown that date to a period closer to the time when she created and performed these five choreographies All of these works reflect a vector of experimentation emanating from Brown’s experiences from late 1963 to early 1965 when she decamped to Oakland, California, teaching dance at her alma mater, Mills College, while her -husband Joseph Schlichter studied dance therapy. It is likely that this dance was performed at California College of the Arts, along with Target—since the program date was about one week before Brown’s 27 April 1964 letter to Rainer, where she mentioned these works Her five documented dances rejected Target’s use of scores that include numbers and language combined with everyday gestures, carryovers from Robert Dunn’s teachings of John Cage’s methods of composition to dancers/choreographers in workshops that spawned Judson Dance Theater. It was not my idea of a dance class.” (Ross 2007, p. 180)

Enter Theatricality

Dance as Theatrical-Therapeutic

Trisha

Conclusions