Costumes
and sets by
Robert Rauschenberg
Score by
Laurie Anderson
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Trisha Brown
Dance Company
Sadler's Wells
6 - 8 October 2003
In the first three dances, 'Set and Reset', Trisha Brown's work is seen at its best; easy and fluid, floating along the seams of the music, giving the dancers an opportunity to be relaxed, graceful and rhythmic. Premiered in 1982, this is the piece that made Trisha Brown's reputation, and because it uses her relatively small lexicon of movement to its best advantage, it is distinctive of her: a signature piece in the fullest sense.
The following 'Geometry of Quiet' does not quite grip the attention as 'Set and Reset' does. Striving for novelty, too much recent dance (this piece was premiered in 2002) has gone for stasis and pose, the tableau effect, instead of staying true to the genius of dance, which is movement first, last and always. Without a vivid choreographic imagination and spectacularly trained dancers, and without being cast in a convincing dance framework, tableau can just seem dull: this threatens here.
The final dance, "Groove and Countermove', does not live up to its title. The first minutes seem to recapitulate the free-flowing idiom of 'Set and Reset' in manner, but then it falters, and trades tableau for energy, in an uneasy abstract mixture which seems to have no plot and little direction.
The dancers in Trisha Brown's troupe are superb, full of talent and strength. The choreography of the first and best of the three dances honoured the expressiveness and elasticity which figure among any dancer's basic equipment, and which these dancers richly possess: one wished to see that happen all evening.
AC Grayling
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