The Trisha Brown Dance Company presents three of Brown's proscenium works in New York for the last time. Goodbyes are never easy when you love someone. Or something. The Trisha Brown Dance Company’s season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the last few days of January represents the last time we New Yorkers will see some of Brown’s major works performed by her dancers. Just realizing … [Read more...]
Flying On
The Trisha Brown Dance Company moves through its final three years. It has only been a few months since I wrote about the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and here I am writing again. Ever since it was announced last year that health issues had caused Brown to retire as company head and sole choreographer and that the dancers were embarking on a three-year farewell tour, I tend to think, “It … [Read more...]
Family Ties
The Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Stephen Petronio Company give their New York seasons the same week. Sitting in the Joyce Theater during the Stephen Petronio Company’s 30th Anniversary Season, the word “highflyer” suddenly pushes it way into my mind. This is not just because Petronio is ambitious and successful, but because he takes risks and succeeds when you might expect him to … [Read more...]
Printed on the Space
Beth Gill and New York Live Arts and Lance Gries at Danspace St. Marks make a virtue of economy. In the deserts of the American Southwest, everything counts: the immense sky, that butte over there, those spiky plants, the track in the red earth (lizard? Maybe). Beth Gill’s beautiful New Work for the Desert has that kind of clarity. Watching it, you sense open space and the trails that … [Read more...]
When An Artist’s Newest Works Are Her Last. . .
On Thursday, January 31, the second day of the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it was announced that Brown, because of health problems, had retired as artistic director of the company she founded over forty years ago, and would choreograph no more dances. Consider these words bordered in black—mourning for the works she might have continued to give … [Read more...]