As part of Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown & Cunningham Onstage, Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Trust honor Robert Rauschenberg’s Centennial with an evening of dance featuring his iconic visual designs. Touring during the 25/26 and 26/27 Seasons, the program includes Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset, with music by Laurie Anderson, and Merce Cunningham’s rarely seen Travelogue, with music by John Cage. A landmark tribute to Rauschenberg’s lasting impact on both visual art and dance.
From Merce Cunningham Trust Website:
“Travelogue” was Rauschenberg’s first collaboration with Cunningham and Cage since 1964. His design, called “Tantric Geography,” featured a row of wooden chairs mounted on white platforms separated by bicycle wheels. At the beginning of the dance this was dragged on stage by a rope, with the dancers seated on the chairs. Over the course of the dance, garments and accessories were added to the basic costumes of brightly colored leotards and tights, including large color-wheel fans, tin cans, banners, flags, and chiffon scarves. The dance had an episodic structure, with the dancers engaged in a series of antic encounters and deadpan entanglements. John Cage’s music, “Telephone and Birds,” incorporated recordings of bird songs and telephone calls made to numbers with recorded messages.
2025 Restaging on the Trisha Brown Dance Company: Travelogue (1977)
Choreography: Merce Cunningham
Music: John Cage, Telephones and Birds
Original design and costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Realization of Telephones and Birds for mobile devices: Adam Tendler
Scenic Reconstruction: UNCSA School of Design & Production and Rose Brand
Costume Reconstruction: Earlene Munnerlyn and Marisa McCullough
Lighting Reconstruction: Davison Scandrett and Joe Levasseur
Dancers: Savannah Gaillard, Burr Johnson, Claude Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Ashley Merker, Patrick Needham, Jennifer Payán, Spencer Weidie