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Trisha Brown:
Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961-2001
New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
212-219-1222
newmuseum.org
October 10, 2003
to January 25, 2004
By
SPENCER BAKER
Robert Rauschenberg
Blind Rosso Porpora Glut (Neopolitan) 1987
assembled objects
Courtesy New Museum of Contemporary Art
Brief history: during
the 60's a group of dance mavericks followed the lead of Fluxus performance
and Robert Raushenberg and overthrew the boundaries of modern dance.
Thus formed Judson Dance Theater (Judson Church, the Unitarian Church
on Washington Square, was a legendary venue for experiment in the arts):
a radical group of dancers (Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton,
David Gordon, Deborah Hay, Lucinda Childs and others) and artists (Carolee
Schneeman, Robert Morris, Alex Hay). Dance went from a proscenium stage
to streets, lofts and rooftops. Ballets were being produced on everyday
bodies, with everyday clothes, and everyday movement. But there was
nothing casual about it; Judson Dance Theater had broken the rules of
the entire field. Not only was it revolutionary in terms of reestablishing
dance context and content, it was applicable to formal movement. Chief
among Judson's dancers was Trisha Brown, the only Judson member to form
her own international touring dance company (Gordon and Childs have
pick-up companies).
Back to present:
Trisha Brown has successfully led a company for three decades. She codified
her own technique and it is now taught around the world. However, much
of her dance innovations are lost on a non-dancer audience; it simply
looks amazing when performed. Her dancers are far more relaxed than
ballet or even classic modern. Perhaps this is something only felt and
even more difficult to describe.
Since Judson, the
Trisha Brown Dance Company has moved on to performing at opera houses
instead of Happenings and makeshift spaces. In fact, it's as a pure
dance that she has chosen to make her mark. Her work now could easily
be compared to that of Merce Cunningham and other classic moderns, except
her elegance graces the casual (trisha's dancers use a technique known
as 'release', where they almost look relaxed or nonchalant). The New
Museum show doesn't emphasize the artist collaborators of the revolutionary
Judson-era work, highlighting instead more recent grandiose efforts
by Terry Winters, Robert Raushenberg, Donald Judd, Fujiko Nayaka and
Nancy Graves in traditional set and costume design. Instead of the dissolution
of hierarchies, the old relationships of costume designer, set designer,
composer and choreographer reestablish themselves.
Granted, there is
an inherent difficulty in showing dance in a museum setting. Dance generally
needs to be seen live in order to be fully understood. The only way
to do that in a museum setting is through props, set design and video.
One problem with this in any museum show about dance is that it shows
everything about dance except what is most interesting: the actual dancing
(dance rarely translates well into video). The New Museum curators have
attempted to 'jazz things up' by showing Trisha alongside her collaborative
artistic luminaries. However, there seems to be a stark contrast upon
comparing the Judson era-work to the present day. The Judson pioneers
did not relegate artistic collaboration to backdrops and costumes; the
visual artists actually choreographed and danced in the productions,
and the choreographers made visual works of art. Judson Dance Theater
redefined the word "collaboration": there was no distinctive
hierarchy between artist, set designer, musician, and even audience
member.
The first floor
gallery is dedicated to the experimental work of the sixties and seventies
(along with a separate space devoted to Raushenberg). The strange turn
is the second floor, which looks like a traditional gallery show: showing
large-scale paintings, sculptures, prints, some video and drawings by
Brown and her collaborators.
Nancy Graves Visage 1982
bronze with polychrome patina
Courtesy New Museum of Contemporary Art
Most of the videos
included here were intended for documentation, with a single perspective
that lacks any directorial viewpoint. An exception is Jonathan Demme's
film short 'Talking Accumulation', on display in the museum window,
in which the camera movement really adds another dimension to her work.
I just wish the sound could have been heard. The 'Walking on Walls'
films and 'Rooftop Dances' are totally amazing works of process art,
as well is the set for 'Floor of the Forest', a sculpture of ropes and
clothes suspended on pipes, meant for dancers to get inside. That setpiece
reminds me of a Gordon Matta-Clark sculpture. The installation is over-crowded
with Trisha's odd drawings and some really interesting photos of the
Judson-era work. 'Opal Loop,' a stage set consisting of only steam,
documented here in video, is a collaboration with Fujiko Nayaka. Although
made during the 80's, the way the steam fully integrates itself into
the dance recalls interactive works of the 60's and early 70's.
There is also a
mannequin representing 'Homemade', a remarkable dance Trisha Brown made
with a film projector strapped to her back (showing a sequenced film
of Trisha made by Robert Whitman). This dance is one of the great deconstructive
moments in Postmodernism, bringing into dance the questioning of the
'real and mediated'. Here that performance is reduced to a trivial mannequin
display. The other canonical work 'If You Couldn't See Me,' a solo where
Brown never faces the audience (a response to Yvonne Rainer's 'Trio
A'), is clumsily projected in the hallway upstairs. In general, I would
have preferred curatorial emphasis on the early works, which would have
put Trisha Brown in favorable comparison to conceptual artists like
Yvonne Rainer, Bruce Nauman and Joan Jonas.
The collaborations
with Robert Raushenberg, like his most recent art, are a little bit
soulless, unlike the earlier paintings Raushenberg made with Merce Cunningham's
company. Although the set for 'Glacial Decoy' is austere and memorable
(a series of projected photo works Raushenberg made in Florida), it
only completes itself with the quartet of dancers. Again, the use of
dancing mannequins (wearing Raushenberg costumes) is an extremely silly
stand-in for actual dancing.
The second floor
appears as a traditional gallery of art works (drawing, painting, and
sculpture) by Winters, Judd, Graves, Raushenberg and drawings by Brown
herself. Here also are the corresponding dance collaborations shown
on small video monitors, but they almost could be missed alongside such
massive paintings and sculpture. I suppose that to reaffirm Trisha's
place as a great composer, they chose to display her alongside great
compositions, but the end result is confusing. Some of the works presented
here aren't even objects used in the Brown dances and actually stray
from the theme of collaboration. Since there is little need for any
of these artists to gain more exposure, it seems the curators included
these works to justify her 'art world' importance.
There is ahistorical
precedenceto Brown's conception of herself as a kind of painter/sculptorin
the example of Martha Graham who took inspiration from her sculptural
muse Isamu Noguchi. in the same spirit, there are formal similarities
in the way Brown choreographs and her chosen artists paint or sculpt.
In this show, however, Brown's collaborators come across as 'just art'
(which is unlike the New Museum). I would have preferred a new multi-channel
video installation showing a Trisha Brown dance. They could have recruited
someone like Video Dance impresario Charles Atlas to do the filming,
and then there would be something more akin to seeing Trisha's dance.
I happened to visit
the show on a day when Trisha Brown's Dance Company gave an early evening
live performance. When I saw 'Accumulation?' (the hitchhiker solo) being
performed to 'Uncle John's Band' by the Grateful Dead, I knew why I
had really come here. I won't even go into how turned on I was by the
quartet of moving hips in 'Spanish Dance' set to music by Bob Dylan.
Even the 'moon-unit' Raushenberg sets and John Cage music all made complete
sense in 'Astral Convertible.' The fact is Trisha Brown's art is a mix
of sexy/conceptual in a way unlike that of any other artist. Even after
four decades, her choreography still remains vital. She may even hold
the claim of being the world's most important and influential living
choreographer. I just wish you could tell that from this exhibition.
