TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY

21/22 october
Teatro Olimpico

Brown has a passion for a rich variety of inspirational inputs ranging from corporeity, multidirectional movement, syntax of the exact body, contemporary art, improvisation and music in its every manifestation including silence. This vast range of creative elements which have contributed to Trisha Brown’s success in the international dance scenario will be the focus of the second appointment of the Romaeuropa Festival dedicated to her later creative works.

With her new work, presented for the first time in Italy, Brown aims to explore a world inspired by sculpture and calligraphy or in her words, «the language of the intertwined body». This product of a long period of research started in the early 70's constitutes the first evening dedicated to Brown's “Early Works”. For the second evening “Watermotor”, an energetic solo from 1978, marks the moment in which this N. American choreographer turned away from her previous style influenced by “post-modern dance” to her current, highly personal style. This transformation involved a progressive evolution in many directions and can be seen in works such as the dance installation “Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503”. This work was created together with the Japanese sculptor Fujiko Nakaya—famous for his works using water as a medium—in which the interpreters move through a vaporous mass, creating nebulous, misty sculptures in a dream-like atmosphere. Another key element in her creative base is her rapport with the visual arts, evident in “Foray Forêt”, her most recent collaboration with  Robert Rauschenberg—world-famous playwright and creator of wonderful golden costumes—with whom she creates a powerful effect through sheer physical virtuosity.

Her relationship with the plastic arts emerges in a very different fashion and is present as the central theme of the choreography “Les yeux et l’âme”. She has also written some successful operatic works and staged “Pygmalion”, an 18th century opera-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 2010 at the Holland Festival. With this work, she sought to re-interpret the baroque spirit of the “suite de danse” (a dance cycle) in a contemporary guise in which the interpreters have the role of defying the principles of equilibrium and gravity. The theme of Pygmalion, a Greek sculptor who falls in love with one of his work so much that he asks the Gods to concede him eternal life so that he can marry his own creation resurfaces symbolically in Brown's latest work: dancers work on each other as if sculpting plastic material to confer new internal and external forms to the body.