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Above Left: Trisha Brown performing Accumulation with Talking (1973). Photograph © 1979 The Estate of Nathanial Tileston; Right: A page from the transcript of Trisha's performance of Accumulation with Talking plus Water Motor (1979) at Maison de la Culture de Woluwe, Brussles, November 1, 1979.

The Trisha Brown Dance Company is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Trisha Brown Archives by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.

by Amanda Kmett'Pendry

Read the New York Times article about the placement here.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary this year, our partnership with the New York Public Library represents a major step towards securing Trisha's legacy for future generations. The collection is filled with materials related to Trisha’s groundbreaking life and career, including her personal and professional papers, and choreographic notes. The Trisha Brown Dance Company records also form part of the Archives, and include correspondence, collaborator contracts, cue sheets, lighting plans, costume specifications, performance programs, posters, photographs, music scores, and much more.

Notably, the collection documents Trisha’s work from inception to completion with extensive audiovisual records, including performance documentation, performance for camera, rehearsal footage, and audio recordings. Three hundred Building Tapes exist within the Archives, representing some of the most exciting aspects of the collection. These recordings document how Brown built her work in the rehearsal studio, and each tape is connected to a series of Building Notebooks and scores, also part of the collection.

In 2009, the Trisha Brown Dance Company formalized the Trisha Brown Archives, hiring former company member Cori Olinghouse, who served as Archive Director from 2009 to 2018, to oversee a team of personnel in cataloguing and preserving Trisha Brown's oeuvre. In collaboration with choreographer David Thomson, who also danced with the company, Cori established the database that the Trisha Brown Archives continues to use today. We'd like to recognize and thank our archives team for their enormous work.

Anne Boissonnault, Archive Director
Ben Houtman, Audiovisual Archivist
David Thomson, Archive Technical Consultant

The placement of the Trisha Brown Archives with New York's premiere repository opens up the company's holdings to the dance community, scholars, and the broader public in a manner Trisha had always hoped for. She would be thrilled.

TBDC [Virtual] Company Class resumes next week, hosted online by Movement Research. Every Wednesday, beginning September 9th through December 16th, from 10:30AM to 11:45AM EDT. 

Learn more and register here.

Part of Trisha Brown’s 1976 Line Up, Figure 8 presents a riddle in measuring time and distance through a simple counting structure and repeated gesture that is performed simultaneously on both sides of the body.

In this new digital interpretation of Trisha Brown’s enigmatic piece, TBDC dancers Amanda Kmett’Pendry, Jamie Scott, and Stuart Shugg deconstructed the dance’s original linear component into a digital grid, with all nine current TBDC dancers filmed separately as they move in unison.

This project was produced by Amanda Kmett’Pendry and Jamie Scott. Figure 8 video edited by Stuart Shugg.

Room/Roof Piece is a 25-minute video dance based on Trisha’s 1971 Roof Piece, made remotely by the Trisha Brown Dance Company Dancers as they continue to explore ways of interacting with the work, and each other, from afar. 

Room/Roof Piece was conceived, produced and edited by Amanda Kmett'Pendry and Jamie Scott.

Generations of Trisha Brown Company dancers have performed Roof Piece all over the world. The original version, performed in 1971, spanned 10 blocks in lower Manhattan. This version travels from New South Wales all the way to Brooklyn. Roof Piece uses distance to transcend the boundaries of a room, a stage, and the eye of a single viewer. Dancers simultaneously receive and transmit movement, and as the dance travels distance allows for a decomposition of the original message. In order to hold the integrity of the original work, dancers in Room/Roof Piece are limited to seeing one dancer on the screen. A separate screen capture collected the entire dance, from generation though termination. If we can't be in the same room, we can still dance together! Read coverage of the project in The New York Times, including tips for a DIY home version anyone can try, here.

The map above, generated by MapHubs indicates the performance locations of each dancer for Room/Roof Piece. The performers are Cecily Campbell, Santa Fe, NM; Marc Crousillat, Unadilla, NY; Kimberly Fulmer, Dallas, TX; Leah Ives, Brooklyn, NY; Amanda Kmett'Pendry, Brooklyn, NY; Patrick McGrath, Santa Monica, CA; Jamie Scott, Washington, D.C.; Stuart Shugg, Dunoon, NSW; and Jacob Storer, Richland Center, WI.

Former Trisha Brown Dance Company dancers undertook their own rearrangement of Trisha Brown's Roof Piece (1971).

Trisha Brown Dance Company Alumni performers are Todd Stone, Montreal, Canada; Trina Warren, Kansas City, MO; Mariah Maloney, Brockport, NY; Laurel Jenkins, Middlebury, VT; Kathleen Fisher, Bimini, Bahamas; Hope Mohr, San Francisco, CA; Sam Wentz, Los Angeles, CA; Abby Yager, Winston-Salem, NC; Ming Yang, Winston-Salem, NC; Shelley Senter, Yonkers, NY; Stacy Spence, New York, NY; Brandi Norton, Rhinebeck, NY; Tony Orrico, Iowa City, IA; Leah Morrison, Brooklyn, NY; Diane Madden, Bussels, Belgium. 

To prevent the further spread of COVID-19 and to protect the wellbeing of our community, our Spring Tour in Europe and upcoming performances at The Joyce Theater in New York and the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina have been cancelled. While we are apart, we will continue to share updates about special viewing opportunities and ways to be together here, and on all our social media accounts.

Please see our Performance & Event and Education calendars for further information.

Experience a program celebrating Brown’s extraordinary creative partnership with visual artist Robert Rauschenberg.

In Foray Forêt, with original costumes by Rauschenberg, Brown employs a vocabulary of movements generated by the subconscious — what Brown called “delicate aberrations” — juxtaposing athleticism against subtle physical gesture.

The revival of Astral Converted, set to the music of John Cage, features Rauschenberg’s mobile set of lighting towers, which incorporate motion sensors to detect and respond to the dancers’ movements.

GET YOUR TICKETS TODAY!

Saturday, January 11th, 2020 at 9:55 am & 11:55 am
at NY City Center Studio 4
130 West 56th Street New York, NY

TBDC will perform excerpts of Set and Reset (1983).

Find out more and reserve you spot for the Elsie Management Dance Showcase:
For more information go to their website: https://www.elsieman.org/showcases/

January 13 - 17, 2020
Eden's Expressway
537 Broadway, New York, NY 10012

WINTER INTENSIVE REGISTRATION FORM

For additional questions please email Stacy Spence, Director of Education, at education@trishabrowncompany.org.

The Fairmount Park Conservancy presents three free works with the groundbreaking Trisha Brown Dance Company that will change the way you think about Philadelphia’s favorite outdoor spaces.

In Roof Piece (1971), the rooftops of iconic cultural institutions around Logan Circle serve as an expansive stage for 360-degree choreography. The newly reopened Strawberry Mansion Reservoir at the Discovery Center becomes a stage in Raft Piece (1973). In Foray Forêt (1990) the wooded grounds of Mount Pleasant mansion host dancers in golden costumes designed by artist Robert Rauschenberg. Together, these works invite Philadelphians to experience their park in a whole new way, leaving us inspired by motion, and by place.

CLICK TO RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET NOW.

In Motion, In Place has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

July 22 - 26, 2019

TBDC performs If you couldn’t see me (1994) part of the New Victory Theater’s Victory Dance series, which provides free dance education and performances for students attending summer enrichment programs at NYC public schools. 

Click for more info.