Trisha Brown Company Dances Watermill
If dance is already an art form in itself, then the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s appearances this weekend at the Watermill Center can be likened to an established painter reimagining her most brilliant work in mixed media.
The postmodern dance company will perform pieces from its repertoire, in whole or in part, in various outdoor settings on the grounds of the Watermill Center on Saturday and Sunday at 5 p.m. The audience will follow the dancers across the Watermill Center’s gardens, fields, and other spaces, where the dances have been aligned to the lines, look, and feel of each particular place. The company’s artistic directors have dubbed its outdoor performance series “In Plain Site,” and say the format frees the work from the limitations of the traditional stage.
The outdoor spaces are an ideal setting for this particular series, according to Diane Madden, who is one of the company’s two associate artistic directors. “What has been designed there in terms of natural setting and visual art is incredible,” she said. “It’s sort of the peak of that kind of visual art setting, and makes a lot of sense for us to be presenting Trisha’s choreography in our new programming.”
The Trisha Brown Dance Company’s appearances this weekend will also be a homecoming of sorts for the company. Ms. Brown, its now-retired founding director, worked as an artist resident at the center in the early 1990s, before it underwent renovations, to produce some of the pieces that will be shown on Saturday and Sunday. Her company, now in the hands of Ms. Madden and Carolyn Lucas, will kick off the Watermill Center’s new “reACT” series, which commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Center’s current facility by inviting former artist residents back for new installations. Later performances in the series will include a full-length contemporary opera.
The performance itself will include pieces taken from Ms. Brown’s 30-year body of work. Ms. Madden said it will represent everything from “the early dances she made starting in the 1960s that are without musical accompaniment and are very task-oriented and playful,” to Ms. Brown’s later, “much more choreographically complex dances,” to work from her “Back to Zero” phase, in which she pared her choreography down to what she called its evocative unconscious movement. Ms. Brown was the first woman to win a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Genius Award for her work.
“In Plain Site” is different each time it is performed in a new venue, so this particular iteration can only be seen at the Watermill Center. This weekend’s shows will also be the first in which a full-length dance plus excerpts of others will be shown. Ms. Madden said this series typically includes only excerpts.
“I’m personally very excited because I think the company is one of the top dance companies in the U.S. and certainly in New York,” William Wagner, the Watermill Center’s managing director, said.
Saying this weekend’s performances are important, Mr. Wagner added, “It’s going to be a unique, one-of-a-kind opportunity, and I think it really illustrates this new artistic life that the company is beginning to experience now. I hope the community comes out and sees one of the most groundbreaking choreographers of our time on the East End.”
Ms. Madden, too, said the “reACT” performances are important, not just for the dance company but also for the venue itself.
“I think it’s a significant center for making artwork and also art that is blurring the lines between different art forms in the most interesting way,” Ms. Madden said. “The kind of work that the company did there . . . embodies how the Watermill Center wants to be supporting the arts, which is almost like a think tank, and on top of that it’s a really incredible space.”