Trisha Brown Dance Company at Cal Performances: A Very Personal Review

By Emma Krasov

An overtly controversial choreographer Trisha Brown is known for creating more than 100 dance pieces in 50 years. She is highly regarded among the dance innovators of the world and awarded a ridiculous number of fellowships, medals, and titles. Never having a chance to enjoy her work onstage, I jumped to the opportunity to see what was claimed to be a pre-retirement farewell of the post-modern dance diva.  

The one-night program at Cal Performances contained three pieces – two of the choreographer’s last works and one presumably chosen for its significance – “Newark (Niweweorce)” from 1987. Trying my best to keep following the exaggeratingly acrobatic movements of the admittedly highly-skilled dancers, dressed sometimes in wide-leg PJ trousers and bibs, sometimes in gray body suits resembling orphanage sleepwear or thermal undergarments, and sometimes in regular swimsuits, I caught myself more than once thinking about irrelevant things, like unanswered emails in my inbox and the fact that I forgot to lower the thermostat in my home before leaving for the show. The latter thought might have been inspired by the sound used for the “Newark” piece. That was just a noise, kind of like high-voltage electrical generator – constant, tiring, irritating – sometimes interrupted by long pauses of meaningless silence, and sometimes by other industrial noises. Throughout all this time the dancers were either painfully twisted into forced hard-to-maintain and yet rigidly maintained poses, or engaged in movements best characterized by, Look what I can do!    
Seemingly set on destroying any entertainment value of dance, the revered choreographer showed more concern for the viewer in the opening piece of the program, “Les Yeux et l’ame.” Set to the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Pygmalion,” it presented a kind of a dynamic expression of static sculptural groupings inspired by the preexisting literary source.  

The third piece, partially silent and partially set to the original music by Alvin Curran, “Toss and Find” had a whimsical and rather long and obscure title, “I’m going to toss my arms – if you catch them they’re yours,” and featured dancers attacked by the air flow from giant ventilators and gradually shedding their wide white pants and pleated shirts to remain contorting, turning, and freezing, now clad in regular bathing shorts and suits.

I was genuinely surprised to find out that the entire program lasted only a little more than an hour. It seemed a long night.  With catatonic poses and joint-twisting contortions for dance and industrial noises for music – is the art that bores to tears somehow intimidates people into thinking that it is more serious than the art that excites and invigorates? Sorry to admit that for all the glory and all the titles of the renowned choreographer, for the first time in my balletomane’s life I was bored at a dance show.

More information at: www.calperformances.org. Image courtesy of Cal Performances.