The Trisha Brown Dance Company of New York have announced that two new dances by choreographer Brown are to be performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in January, and will be the final works of her career. Brown, as a pioneer in developing the modern dance era is aged 76. The last time Brown performed with the company was in 2008 at the Joyce Theatre, NYC, and has remained in her role as the company’s Artistic Director since, despite not taking to the stage in full costume in recent years.
Brown founded the company in SoHo in 1970 and went on to choreograph more than 100 dances and win a number of prestigious awards. These included the National Medal of Arts and 1991 marked Brown as the first female choreographer to win a MacArthur “genius” grant. Brown was active in instating the Judson Dance Theatre era in the 1960s and developing what was known as post-modern dance to the twentieth-century eye, the focus of dance no longer on narrative or emotive works.
The two new dances to be performed, both created in 2011, will have their New York premiere as part of Brown’s coming season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I’m going to toss my arms — if you catch them they’re yours is to be a collaboration with the composer Alvin Curran (who will perform live) and the artist Burt Barr. Les Yeux et l’ame will be a set of interconnected dances adapted from Brown’s version of the Baroque opera Pygmalion, which was first performed in 2010.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music programme will also include older works from Brown’s repertoire, including a recent reconstruction of Newark (1987) and the statement work Set and Reset, a 1983 collaboration with Laurie Anderson and Robert Rauschenberg that celebrates the 30th anniversary of its own premiere at the academy.