The Madoo Conservancy is set to host the Trisha Brown Dance Company on Saturday and Sunday in its Sagaponack gardens. The performance, titled “Trisha Brown: In Plain Site,” is an outdoor showing of selections from company’s “Early Works.” Carolyn Lucas, Trisha Brown’s associate artistic director, said Madoo is the perfect setting for these pieces.
“Madoo is amazing,” Ms. Lucas said. “When I did my second site visit there, I saw how it’s a very dynamic, continuing, and ever-changing garden. It’s beautiful and it’s wonderful to perform in gardens.” She said that while one might expect challenges when performing in an outdoor venue, Trisha Brown designed the dance segments to be showcased in nature.
“Trisha had already placed many of the early works outdoors, which means it is perfectly malleable for this setting,” Ms. Lucas said. “What is wonderful is that Trisha made these works that we can do on the grass. They were meant to be there or in museums. There is a lot of creativity and it’s very adaptable.”
Ms. Brown, who died in 2017 at the age of 80, developed her choreography in the urban setting of New York. Throughout her career, she went through many cycles of modern dance and explored a multitude of untraditional performance spaces.
“We have the opportunity to do these works at these gardens and it is a beautiful opportunity for the audience to move through the landscape,” Ms. Lucas said. “It is a much more intimate setting, and much more up close. The dancing will be a guided path and the audience will be directed to a certain location, often with the help of the dancers.”
“I think ‘Early Works’ are very strong wherever they are,” Ms. Lucas said. “I feel like it’s appropriate to start at the beginning. All of Trisha’s ‘Early Works,’ even though they’re rigorous, they’re playful and imaginative. I think it’s amazing to have a simple idea that works really beautifully. In these ‘Early Works’ you can trace them into Trisha’s evolution.”
Ms. Lucas said a lot of the pieces in the program are what Ms. Brown would have called mathematical cycles in which she worked with accumulating gestures or movements. “In one meadow we are doing a work from 1968 called ‘Falling Duet,’ which is a beautiful work where Trisha really loved to challenge gravity and just make this very beautifully structured duet of two people where one person falls while trying to keep the long line. Then, another dancer finds a way to break the fall and melt into the floor.”
While many of the pieces lend themselves to the garden space, Ms. Lucas said there is one dance — “Locus” from 1975 — for which the company will use platforms to allow for a greater array of movement. “That is really hard to do on grass.”
What’s unique about the performance is how the dancer connects with the audience, Ms. Lucas said. “Some people have seen accumulation-style dance before and they get it immediately while others take more time,” she said. “There is a lot of joy in the various aspects of the show, and I think it will be a fun adventure for everyone.”
In the gallery at Madoo, visitors can listen to Ms. Brown in the recorded piece “Skymap” from 1969. “It’s sound recorded text that Trisha wrote and read. There is no dancing involved. Instead, she informs or guides the audience on how to mentally construct an overhead map of the United States. The vocals are a nice connection to Robert Dash, who was a poet.” Mr. Dash, an artist, gardener, and writer, bought the property that later became the Madoo Conservancy in 1967. It became a public garden 30 years ago.
Tickets for the event are $150 and include a cocktail reception with the dancers and other artistic creators. They can be bought through the websites of either the dance company or the Madoo Conservancy.
