Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown Choreographer

Biography

Originally from Aberdeen, Washington, Trisha Brown studied classical dance and then trained in various modern techniques at Mills College in California, before turning to improvisation. In 1960, she moved to New York, where she studied with Merce Cunningham and took part in choreography-composition workshops led by musician and teacher Robert Ellis Dunn. There, she met the young artists who would soon disrupt the foundations of American modern dance and lay the groundwork for post-modern dance.

With them, she co-founded the Judson Church Dance Theatre in 1962, a minimalist avant-garde movement bringing together painters, musicians, and choreographers. Trisha Brown presented her research in unconventional spaces, such as her “anti-gravity dances,” which explored the walls of New York skyscrapers.

In 1970, she established her own company and pioneered new territories, conceiving her work in cycles, each inaugurating a new way of thinking about movement. After long privileging silence—highlighting only the musicality of the dancing body—Trisha Brown began in the 1990s new cycles focused on the relationship between dance and music.

The author of around one hundred choreographic works, she was invited in 2003 to the Paris Opera for a four-season cycle that included the addition of Glacial Decoy to the repertoire, the creation of O złożony / O composite (2004), the arrival of the Trisha Brown Dance Company (2006), and the staging of Salvatore Sciarrino’s opera Da gelo a gelo (2007). Trisha Brown passed away in 2017.

Immerse in the Paris Opera universe

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