Bryn Mawr Performing Arts Series to Host Year-Long Celebration of Trisha Brown

Bryn Mawr Performing Arts Series presents a year-long celebration of Trisha Brown, an internationally-known leader of post-modernism and enduring renegade whose work has rarely been seen in Philadelphia. Trisha Brown: In the New Body showcases Brown's iconic choreography, and her influence and innovative ideas on movement and art. Named In the New Body because of Brown's influential reimagining of the body's relationship to gravity and momentum, this festival presented in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania Ballet and several area universities will celebrate the major phases of Brown's work through free and ticketed performances and illuminating classes, workshops and talks with the artists and scholars who know her work best.

"Trisha Brown is an American original whose daring, innovative work changed the course of dance. At her retirement from choreographing and in the final months of her company's Proscenium Works: 1979 - 2011 tour, In The New Body is offering Philadelphia audiences the exceptional opportunity to see performance of her work as it spanned of forty years of her career and witness for themselves why it has been so honored and loved around the world," writes Lisa Kraus, curator of Bryn Mawr Performing Arts Series and curator of In the New Body.

Trisha Brown: In the New Body has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

PERFORMANCES: THE EARLY YEARS

The Barnes Foundation presents the Philadelphia premiere of Early Works on Sunday, October 18 at 11 AM and 2 PM. Trisha Brown's seminal choreograph deconstructs the dancing body and finds new ways to reimagine the body's relationship to space. The seminal Early Works blur the boundaries between dance and installation art and are some of Brown's most radical departures from conventional performance: stripped-down, striking visual events for outdoor and gallery spaces.

PERFORMANCES: THE MIDDLE YEARS

Bryn Mawr Performing Arts Series presents Trisha Brown Dance Company on October 23 and 24 in Proscenium Works: 1979-2011, featuring masterpieces of Brown's works for the stage spanning three decades. The program includes Set and Reset (1983) with a score by Laurie Anderson and set design by Robert Rauschenberg, a work which solidified Brown's stature as an innovator within the dance world and cemented her as an artist of global significance; If You Couldn't See Me (1994) performed entirely with the dancer's back to the audience; and PRESENT TENSE (2002), which is set to music by John Cage and combines Brown's abstract aesthetic with her interest in emotional narrative. The work features aerial choreography and raucous, cantilevering partnering, with dancers riding and tumbling, suspended across the performance space.

PERFORMANCES: THE LATER YEARS

Pennsylvania Ballet's presentation of O zlozony/O composite, on its Balanchine and Beyond program, heralds the first time that Brown's work has been danced by an American ballet company. This work, originally created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2004, will be given five performances on June 9-12, 2016. In this dance, Brown merged her iconic dance style with the classical ballet lexicon.

CLASSES AND LECTURES

The festival will kick off with a week of free master classes and talks at Drexel University, Swarthmore College, Temple University and University of the Arts conducted by Wendy Perron, dance critic and former Trisha Brown Dance Company dancer.

The Barnes Foundation will present At the Crossroads of Dance and Visual Art: The Pioneering Choreography of Trisha Brown on Saturday, October 17. Susan Rosenberg, scholar-in-Residence at the Trisha Brown Dance Company offers an overview of Brown's unprecedented career working at the crossroads of dance and visual art for over fifty years, focusing on Brown's most significant innovations and her work's fundamental artistic principles. Artist and curator Marissa Perel will also lead a panel discussion on the legacy of Brown's work on the next generation of artists and choreographers.

There will be additional classes, lectures, etc. with the full schedule available in July on the website: trishabrown.brynmawr.edu

TRISHA BROWN: IN THE NEW BODY TIMELINE

September 29 - December 11 -- Trisha Brown: (Re)framing collaboration. An exhibition of the art of Trisha Brown and her collaborators. Bryn Mawr College, Canaday Library

September 29-October 3, 2015 - University Dance Master Classes/Talks/Presentations by Wendy Perron

Drexel University, Swarthmore College, Temple University, University of the Arts

October 13, 2015 at 7 PM - Lecture by Wendy Perron on Judson Dance Theater: The Transformation from Modern to Contemporary

Mandell Theater, Drexel University

October 17, 2015 at 2 PM - At the Crossroads of Dance and Visual Art: The Pioneering Choreography of Trisha Brown: Lecture by Susan Rosenberg followed by panel discussion moderated by Marissa Perel

Barnes Foundation

October 18, 2015 at 11 AM and 2 PM - Early Works Performances by Trisha Brown Dance Company

Barnes Foundation

October 22, 2015 at 4 PM - Master class taught by Trisha Brown Dance Company
Bryn Mawr College

October 23 & 24, 2015 at 8 PM - Performances by Trisha Brown Dance Company

Bryn Mawr College

April 14, 2015 - The New Body: Nuts and Bolts - A session exploring how Brown's unique movement style is transmitted. With TBDC restager, ballet dancers and special guest

Pennsylvania Ballet

May 1, 2016 - Lecture by Susan Rosenberg on Trisha Brown's collaborations with visual artists and musicians

Barnes Foundation

June 9-12, 2016 - O zlozony /O composite

Pennsylvania Ballet

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