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Trisha Brown Dance Company presents Second Commissioned Work at The Joyce Theater

Company:
Trisha Brown Dance Company

The Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) is presenting the New York premiere of a new commissioned work, In the Fall, by French choreographer Noé Soulier at its spring season at The Joyce Theater, March 26-31. Reflecting Brown’s groundbreaking spirit of innovation, TBDC’s second commission seeks to enter Brown’s choreographic legacy into dialogue with a new generation of artists. This collaboration pays homage to the rich history that Trisha Brown and the company has had with France and its culture. The Joyce program also includes Working Title (1984) and Glacial Decoy (1979), Brown’s first collaboration with artist Robert Rauschenberg.

For Noé Soulier, Brown’s movement thwarts the geometric paradigm of modern dance, requiring a profound decentering of physical reference points. In his new piece for TBDC, In the Fall, he establishes a dialogue with Brown’s work, seeking to test the living archive of the company’s dancers, while allowing them to apprehend a new universe which plays on both fluidity and opposition. Soulier is currently Director of the Center National de Danse Contemporaine (Cndc) in Angers and was a resident choreographer with Villa Albertine as part of the 2023 Albertine Dance Season. Soulier’s In the Fall was created with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and was co-produced by TBDC, Cndc-Angers and Festival D’Automne Paris with additional support from Villa Albertine.

Glacial Decoy was Trisha Brown’s first work for the proscenium stage. With gossamer costumes and a kaleidoscopic set designed by Robert Rauschenberg, the dancers’ gorgeous rush of entrances and exits are framed by four screens upon which black-and-white slides of homespun Americana are projected. In Brown’s own words, it is “a woman’s quartet that slides back and forth.” This ploy suggests an infinite number of dancers offstage to the right and left. A fifth dancer’s entry toward the end of the dance clinches the illusion.  Premiering at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) in 1979, TBDC’s Glacial Decoy was last seen in New York in 2009 at The Brooklyn Academy of Music.

A precursor to Lateral Pass (1985), Working Title was originally presented as a work-in-progress, with different units of the choreography combined and rearranged for each new performance. Set to a hauntingly atmospheric score by Peter Zummo, the piece features newly commissioned costumes by Elizabeth Cannon which resonate with Nancy Graves’ original designs. According to Brown, the work focuses attention on a “collage of asymmetrical and unpredictable traveling patterns.”