Trisha Brown Dance Company To Return to The Joyce with a Premiere and 2 Landmark Works

The Trisha Brown Dance Company returns to The Joyce Theater (April 29 - May 4) with a program celebrating Trisha Brown’s Unstable Molecular Structure cycle, a defining artistic period which introduced the fluid yet unpredictable geometric style that remains a hallmark of her work today. The Joyce program will feature two iconic pieces from this cycle, Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503 (1980) and Son of Gone Fishin’ (1981) both epitomizing Brown’s slippery, sensual flow of movement. Alongside these landmark works, the company, in partnership with Rolex, is pleased to present a new commissioned piece, Time again, by Australian choreographer Lee Serle in collaboration with Colombian visual artist Mateo López.

Trisha Brown had a profound influence on Serle’s creative process, serving as his mentor in the Rolex mentoring programme in 2010-2011. He continues to draw inspiration from this experience as well as from Brown’s methodology and body of work. Time again, set to an original score by Australian sound artist Alisdair Macindoe, explores cycles of time and the transformative potential of revisiting the past, where each return presents an opportunity to reframe and reshape our choices with a fresh perspective. Mateo López, also a former protégé in the Rolex mentoring programme—mentored by William Kentridge in 2012-2013—is designing the stage and costumes. López and Serle, collaborators since 2016, have consistently explored themes of chance, time, encounters, and the connections woven into daily life.

Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503 is Brown’s breathtaking collaboration with Japanese fog artist Fujiko Nakaya. This mysterious piece that flirts with perception and illusion features four dancers moving through Nakaya’s fog “cloud sculpture,” which creates sound as water passes through high-pressure nozzles. The movement reflects the delicate balance of the air surrounding the dancers, both constantly changing form and drifting off.

Son of Gone Fishin’, Brown’s first musical collaboration, features a raucous score by Robert Ashley. Revealing her precise, mathematical approach to movement, this complex choreographic structure is belied by the constant ebb and flow of six dancers accompanied by musical arrangements from three operas in Ashley’s Atalanta. The piece radiates outward like ripples from a stone cast into water—a natural metaphor Brown used to describe its severe yet captivating form. 

This year, the Joyce season is dedicated to Dorothy Lichtenstein whose extraordinary commitment and leadership at TBDC helped shape the company for more than two decades. TBDC will posthumously honor Dorothy at its opening night gala on April 29. As a devoted board member and esteemed Board Chair, Dorothy championed Trisha Brown’s vision with unwavering support, ensuring that Trisha’s groundbreaking work remained vibrant and vital for future generations. The gala will be chaired by Agnus Gund and Barbara Bertozzi. Gala tickets will go on sale March 17th . Please see here for more information.

PERFORMANCE TIMES:

Tue–Fri 7:30pm; Sat 2pm & 7:30pm; Sun 2pm 

TICKET PRICES:

Single tickets start at $10. Call JoyceCharge (212-242-0800); visit the Box Office (Monday-Friday, 12- 6pm); or charge online at www.Joyce.org. NOTE: Ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street.

Trisha Brown (Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer) was born and raised in Aberdeen, Washington, graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, and studied with Anna Halprin before moving to New York City in 1961.  Brown, along with like-minded artists, pushed the limits of choreography and changed modern dance forever.  In 1970, Brown formed her company and explored the terrain of her adoptive SoHo.  She engaged collaborators who are themselves leaders in music, theater, and the visual arts, including visual artists Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, and Elizabeth Murray, and musicians Laurie Anderson, John Cage, and Alvin Curran, to name a few.  With these partners, Brown has created an exceptionally varied body of over 100 dance works. Brown is also an accomplished visual artist; her drawings have been seen in exhibitions, galleries and museums throughout the world, she is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in NYC. Trisha Brown is the first woman choreographer to receive the coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellowship “Genius Award.”  She has been awarded many other honors including five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NY ‘Bessie’ Lifetime Achievement Award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the Dance/USA Honors Award. She has been named a Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame, Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the government of France.

Lee Serle graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance in 2003 and has presented his choreographic work to critical acclaim worldwide, creating dances on all scales, from grand stages to the intimate and personal. His commissions include the Lyon Opera Ballet (France), Sydney Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Inc, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Dancenorth, among others. Lee choreographs within varied contexts and forms creating proscenium works, site-specific and interactive performance, intimate solo dances, and within the gallery, engaging a broad range of artistic collaborators.

Lee began his career as a sought-after collaborator and performer in Melbourne, contributing to the works of notable choreographers including Lucy Guerin, Gideon Obarzanek, Shelley Lasica, among others. He was selected to be mentored by seminal American choreographer Trisha Brown for the 2010-2011 edition of the Rolex mentoring programme. Lee was invited on as a TBDC dancer, after his official mentorship had ended. Following his time with Trisha Brown, he was awarded an Australia Council ‘Creative Australia’ Fellowship that facilitated his ongoing choreographic practice for two years mentored by another seminal American choreographer Tere O’Connor. Lee has also received Fellowships from the City of Sydney and the Chloe Munro Bequest awarded via Lucy Guerin Inc.

Lee is a highly regarded educator having lectured and choreographed at tertiary institutions in Australia, USA and Europe, and was Education and Licensing Director for Trisha Brown Dance Company in 2017 facilitating the dissemination of Brown’s work globally.

Mateo López lives and works between Bogotá and New York. He studied architecture for two years at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá before switching to Visual Arts at Bogotá’s Universidad de Los Andes. López’s work engages with cartographies, journeys and construction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. His practice traces a conceptual approach, expanding from drawings to installations, architecture, films and sculptural choreography. Key international solo exhibitions include Sin Principio / Sin Final Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogota, Colombia (2018); Undo List, The Drawing Center, New York, USA (2017); A Weed is a Plant Out of Place, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland (2016) and Deriva at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009).

Important group exhibitions include United States of Latin America, curated by Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA (2015); A Trip from Here to There, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2013) and Ha sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar, 29 Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2010).  Major awards and residencies include the Gasworks Residency Program, London, UK in 2010, which was followed by an exhibition. He was selected as 2012–2013 Rolex mentoring program protégé to one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, William Kentridge. López’s work can be found in public collections around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Banco de la Republica, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia, Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY.

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