The Trisha Brown Dance Company is dedicated to the performance and preservation of the work of Trisha Brown and projects related to her legacy. Established in 1970, TBDC has toured throughout the world presenting work, teaching, and building relationships with audiences and artists alike.
Brown engaged collaborators who are themselves leaders in music, theater, and the visual arts, including visual artists Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, and Elizabeth Murray and musicians Laurie Anderson, John Cage, and Alvin Curran, to name a few. With these partners, Brown created an exceptionally varied body of work, with premieres and performances for NYC audiences and international counterparts. When Brown retired as head of her Company in 2013, the Board appointed longtime Company members Diane Madden and Carolyn Lucas as Associate Artistic Directors with the mandate that they present her dances in a variety of spaces, indoors and out, proscenium and alternative; develop, deepen, and expand the Company’s educational initiatives; and treat the Company’s archive as a living organism to be used to better understand her work, in particular, and dance in general.
To complement and augment the proscenium touring, TBDC is offering Trisha Brown: In Plain Site, working closely with presenters worldwide in creating a specific program for the venues or sites they select, adapting Brown’s broad range of works into a site-specific performance experience. Special focus is put on the audience engagement at each venue, breaking down access barriers, and providing a more intimate experience to an audience that includes families and people less familiar with modern dance.
The Company’s Education and Outreach program includes worldwide workshops, master classes, and lecture demonstrations. Licenses of selected works are given to carefully chosen educational institutions and professional companies worldwide, and works are regularly restaged on dance students and professional companies. Recent licensing and restaging projects include Lyon Opera Ballet, Stephen Petronio Company, Paris Opera Ballet, Candoco Dance Company (London), London Contemporary Dance School, Mills College, University of Washington Seattle, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Yale University.
In 2009, Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) created the Trisha Brown Archive. The collection features close to 3,000 moving image materials including master performance footage of over 90 original works as well as “building tapes” – videos made while Brown created these works. The Archive also holds significant items such as photos, press, and programs as well as audio material, musical scores, sets, and costumes from Brown’s collaboration with some of the pre-eminent artists of the era. Archival material is used during the Company’s rehearsal processes and integrated into TBDC’s performance engagements to create a historical context for the work that is seen on stage. The Archive also provides reference assistance to staff members, students, and researchers and facilitates requests for exhibition materials from a variety of cultural institutions. The Archive recently collaborated on three major exhibits on Robert Rauschenberg: Robert Rauschenberg at the Tate Modern, Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends at MOMA, and Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules at SF MOMA.