Trisha Brown: Early Works
Nov 10, 2010
Members of the Trisha Brown Dance Company perform Brown’s Walking on the Wall, October 2010. Photograph by Alix Finkelstein
Off the Wall: Part 2 featured the Trisha Brown Dance Company on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, performing seven iconic works from the 1970s, including Walking on the Wall, performance films, and a sound installation, Skymap. Performances took place daily from September 30 through October 3, 2010 in the Second Floor Galleries, Sculpture Court, and outside the Whitney on East 75th Street.
In her early choreography, Brown upended the conventions of modern dance and expanded the boundaries of the performance space; intrinsic to her work is the use of architecture, including walls and building facades. For the performance of Walking on the Wall, dancers mounted ladders placed at opposite ends of the gallery and silently slipped their bodies into harnesses. Launched into space, they walked, skipped, and ran along the gallery walls, passing each other in opposite directions. Brown’s choreography is also intended to engage the viewer’s own understanding of space and movement. As the Whitney audience shifted from place to place to accommodate the dancers’ movements, they too became part of the performances.
By Alix Finkelstein, Education Intern