Walker Art Center Exhibits Trisha Brown's Drawings

The celebration also includes presentations of several early site-specific performance works as part of the Walker's July Free First Saturday event and an evening of dance on April 25 at Northrop. The Walker, Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota, and the University of Minnesota Dance Program come together in a unique partnership to present this tribute to honor the work of Trisha Brown (b.1936), one of the founding innovators of postmodern dance. Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing features a survey of Brown's drawings, a live early performance work in the gallery, a large improvisational drawing to be performed by Brown at the exhibition preview, and videos of seminal early performances. On Thursday, April 17, prior to an exhibition preview and reception, Brown makes a rare solo appearance in the gallery to create a work on paper that synthesizes drawing and dance. The Year of Trisha also includes lectures, classes, workshops, and a residency.

While Trisha Brown is best known for her innovative choreographies that revolutionized modern dance, she has for many years made drawings and other works beyond the stage that integrate the performing and visual arts. Trisha Brown presents a particular occasion to consider the lesser-known visual arts practice of one of the most acclaimed contemporary choreographers at a moment of increasing interest in the broad sweep of her work and its influence. Drawing has long featured prominently in Brown's maverick practice, shifting from a tool for schematic composition into a fully realized component of her broader investigation into the limits of her own body.

Early in her career, Brown created works in which performers walked on the walls of a gallery or down the exterior façade of a building—rather than on the floor. The exhibition takes inspiration in its structure from Brown's interest in reorienting the performer and audience, with a performance installation that places live dancers on the wall of the gallery, and a participatory audio work that invites visitors to lie on the gallery floor and contemplate the ceiling. The former work, Planes (1968), is a major early performance that includes a film by Jud Yalkut and soundtrack by Simone Forti; the latter, Skymap (1969), was Brown's one attempt to engage the ceiling as a performative surface.

The exhibition centers on a broad survey of Brown's drawings going back more than three decades, concluding with a large drawing to be performed by the artist at the opening for inclusion in the show. To a significant degree, the arc of Brown's work in drawing parallels her developments in dance, and footage of seminal performances is present throughout the exhibition. Turning to video to help compose dances freed Brown to make her drawings more "private and experimental," says exhibition curator Peter Eleey." Looking at 35 years of Trisha's drawings, you watch her discover and embrace ways in which the line she draws can have bigger and more direct connections to her body and its movements." Whether she is working within the frame of a sheet of paper, on the wall, or on the stage, Brown delights in the play between structure and improvisation, between repetition and invention, and between choice and chance. "I get involved in the mystery of space," she says. "I have the same adrenaline and heartbeat going as I enter the paper as I do going on stage."

An icon of contemporary dance, Trisha Brown is regularly seen in the world's great opera houses and festivals. She has consistently pushed the limits of choreography, creating some of the most compelling and visually powerful work of the past four decades—from her roots in the experimental Judson Dance Theater to her early site-specific dances that took place on rooftops and walls to the fluid, precise movement of her 30 years of staged pieces.

Brown first performed at the Walker in 1971 as part of the pioneering performance/dance collective Grand Union (which also included David Gordon, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton and other luminaries from the Judson Dance Theater era) during an extensive residency which included stage performances, site specific pieces, and teaching. She was invited back to the Walker to create and present site-specific works in the early 1970s, and returned numerous times with her full company. Some works that are considered her signature pieces (such as Foray Forêt) were commissioned by the Walker. The Year of Trisha celebration has special historic importance for both the Walker and for Brown and her company. Increasingly the Walker is interested in identifying artists who naturally blur lines between artistic disciplines and/or cross over between them.

Trisha Brown's work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions, most recently Documenta 12, and she has directed numerous operas. She is the first woman choreographer to receive the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and has been awarded many other honors, including the National Medal of Arts in 2003. She was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 1988; was elevated to Officier in 2000; and then to the level of Commandeur in 2004. Brown's Set and Reset is included in the baccalaureate curriculum for French students pursuing dance studies. At the invitation of President Bill Clinton, Brown served on the National Council on the Arts from 1994 to 1997. -- www.walkerart.org