But my absolute favorite, make-my-hips-move and my body and mind smile was "Spanish Dance (from Line Up)". Funny/desirous/undesirous
/mechanical/gorgeous/diva-meets-minimal! Here is Wendy Perron, one of the dancers, writing on Brown, this piece and more, years later:
Thinking now, too, about how she uses improvisation within limits, within self-imposed structures, and how she (so says the catalog), borrowed that from musical composition of the time. Hence the way some of the drawings are a kind of diagrammatic space (one, literally, a cubic rectangle with points in space mapped throughout based on the letters of written-out biographical information). Others, like letters becoming figures seen from above.
Also getting to know her wildness and somehow, casualness. It still has something radical about it for me...it's so loose and as she says, ..."so that the audience does not know whether I have stopped dancing." She also said, "unpredictable, unlikely, continuous."
Her drawings remind me of Eva Hesse's compositions on graph paper, and of course there are many other resonances with her later drawings, including the drawing-restraint pieces that come to mind: Carolee Schneeman, how can I not think of Yves Klein, and on their shoulders, Matthew Barney...
This week I'm working on a kind of vest for some more heavy-duty cords or ropes to explore this idea of restraint-and-movement for Gulliver Part 1, and the muslin jumpsuit with embroidery hoops. I'm also looking at different Codices from Aztec culture - I love these drawings so much I can hardly stand it....as I love Durer. They have a mix of cartoon fleshiness, plumpness, and vulnerability.
Another NY Times piece on 20 Years of Trisha Brown from the early '90s:
