Client: 2019 Edinburgh International Festival Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland

Overview

“Trisha Brown: In Plain Site” pairs your indoor and outdoor sites with select pieces from Trisha Brown’s iconic movement repertory. Short dances (4-15 minutes in length) are restaged in a dynamic relationship to each setting, amplifying dance’s effortless affinity to many environments.
Ever a resourceful and dexterous innovator, Brown “…said she felt sorry for spaces that weren’t center stage—the ceiling, walls, corners, and wing space. Not to mention trees, lakes, and firehouses,” Wendy Perron wrote in Dance Magazine. In the early 1970’s, Brown “caused a revolution by turning to the spaces that other dance-makers don’t.” In parks, museums, and public squares, among other sites, audiences revel in the intimate, up-close experience of movement – a silent language capable of transcending barriers.
“Brown, who stopped choreographing in 2011 and died in 2017, was a central figure in the postmodern dance experimentation that began in the 1960’s. In this Edinburgh anthology, her pre-1980 work proved especially enthralling and poetic,” wrote Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times of the “Trisha Brown: In Plain Site” engagement at Jupiter Artland in August, 2019. https://tinyurl.com/ay5nwj3y

Goals

One of the most acclaimed and influential choreographer/dancers of her time, Trisha Brown’s groundbreaking choreography forever changed the landscape of art. Brown contributed significantly to the fervent of interdisciplinary creativity that defined 1960’s New York. Expanding the physical behaviors that qualified as “dance,” she discovered the extraordinary in everyday, bringing tasks, natural movement, and improvisation into the making of choreography.
The Trisha Brown Dance Company perpetuates Brown’s legacy through its “Trisha Brown: In Plain Site” program. It draws on Brown’s model; reinvigorating her choreography through its re-siting of dances to new contexts, including outdoor sites and indoor settings. In dialogue with its clients, the company develops programs that engage the viewer with Brown’s pristine artistry, reframed against a broad array of natural and built landscapes.
The goal of engaging the viewer in an unexpected moment of movement is realized through the presentation of these brief dances. The accidental audience can delight in discovering dancers performing on floating rafts in their favorite park or seeing bodies dancing on a rooftop some 25 stories overhead! These dances celebrate time and space, rendering locations forever changed by their presence.

Process

The most suitable performance sites are gallery or museum spaces, or other open spaces such as a lobby, atrium or outdoor park, plaza or other architecturally specific site. Optimal sites accommodate the accidental audience to view – allowing for that wonderful element of surprise.
Once the client and company confirm the client’s performance sites, the company offers specific dances for these sites, composing a program typically one-hour in length. This program may have the viewers walking from one location to the next. Up to two performances each day/night can be scheduled.
Seating can be provided to accommodate the aged or disabled. Temperature and weather must be considered when performing outdoors. The client secures all necessary permits for use of public spaces. Amplified sound is required for some of the dances.
The client provides a production staff with a communication system in the form of headsets. No theatrical lighting is required, but the performance sites should have good lighting. Outdoor venues should be augmented with lighting if performances occur after sundown. Artistic leadership of the Company will make an advance trip to the performance sites to determine the placement and flow of the presentation of the dances.

Additional Information

In her lifetime Trisha Brown was the recipient of nearly every award available to contemporary choreographers. The first woman to receive the coveted MacArthur ‘genius’ grant (1991), Brown was honored by five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; two John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships; and Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Medal in Dance (1982). In 1988, she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the government of France. At the invitation of President Bill Clinton, Brown served on the National Council on the Arts from 1994 to 1997. In 2003, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts. She had the prestigious honor to serve as a 2010-2011 Rolex Arts Initiative Mentor. She received numerous honorary doctorates, is an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded the 2011 New York Dance and Performance ‘Bessie’ Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2011, Brown received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for making an “outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” It is the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s honor to offer these extraordinary dances in public settings in response to nature, architectures, and space.