AISLE SAY Jacob's Pillow

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY

Artistic director/choreographer – Trisha Brown

Jacob’s Pillow August 10-14

Reviewed by Joel Greenberg

Trisha Brown Dance Company is celebrating its 40^th anniversary and Jacob’s Pillow is featuring their work in four dance pieces.

According to a programme note, by scholar-in-residence Maura Keefe, “Brown sometimes makes the path of her choreographic journeys visible to the audience, while other times she merely lets us witness the outcome.”

The work onstage demonstrates the divergent strands of Brown’s path: in “Les Yeux et l’Ame” and “Spanish Dance” Brown allows us in and takes us on the dancers’ journeys. We are part of this shared experience. The intimate relationship between Brown, her dancers and the audience opens us to her use of fluid shaping and capricious partnering. “Foray Foret” (my keyboard has no French characters, so the missing ^ over the “e” is not an error) and “Set and Reset” (a work commissioned in 1982 by the Pillow) are, by contrast, elusive and at an emotional remove.

“Les Yeux…” is played against Jennifer Tipton’s depths of lighting that add dimension and texture to the images of bodies intertwining and of groupings in a continual state of realignment. The ensemble attacks the shaping and reshaping without apparent effort or self-consciousness – they morph with an ease that relaxes us into ‘just watching’. Thinking is a later thing, for those who want and need to make intellectual sense of what the eye, alone, can absorb.

“Spanish Dance”, which opens the second half of the programme, is set to the music of Gordon Lightfoot’s “In the Early Morning Rain”. (The recording used by Brown is the by Bob Dylan.) The short dance is defined by its warmth and rather predictable design. Brown’s sense of humour is as much a part of this work as the dance itself.

“Foray Foret” and “Set and Reset” are both admirable dances that continue to demonstrate the dancers’ discipline and remarkable control of body and space. There is a repetitive aspect in both that separated me from the work. Further, and perhaps prompted by the note I quoted at the top, I felt more witness than participant, and without greater experience with Brown’s work I also felt that having a guide of some kind would have been useful.

But, then, quoting Keefe’s notes, “Brown reminds us again and again that choreography is at its best and richest when body and mind work in concert to investigate the whys and wherefores of movement, structure, and space,” I think that I saw and felt the intersection with half of her work and was struggling (and failing/flailing) with the other half.

And perhaps that’s an ideal introduction to Trish Brown.

Return to Home Page

Road (National) Tour Review Index

New York City & Environs Theatre Review Index

Berkshire, Massachusetts Theatre Review Index

Boston Area Theatre Review Index

Florida Theatre Review Index

Minneapolis/St. Paul (Twin Cities) Theatre Review Index

Philadelphia & Environs Theatre Review Index

San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Review Index

Seattle Area Theatre Review Index

Toronto, Ontario (Canada) Index