Serenity in the Face of Danger

March 7, 2017

At Dia:Beacon this weekend, Trisha Brown placed her
Group Primary Accumulations with Movers
into the Michael Heizer Gallery, whose floor has four huge, deep canyons carved into it. The four women were lying on their backs serenely performing the simple, sensual accumulation: lift the right arm from the elbow; do it again and then lift the left arm from the shoulder; do that again and brush your hair behind your ear. And on and on.

 

Soon each woman was interrupted by two men who picked her up and carried her to a new spot.
 
She did not look at her new surroundings but blithely continued her sequence, hoping they haven’t placed her too close to those canyons. The audience stood behind plexiglass barriers because nobody wants visitors falling into big deep holes. From where we stood, we could not see through to the bottom. I wondered how I would feel being carried to who-knows-where and it could be near a precipice. Trust is key.

 

Another amazing spectacle was seeing
Figure 8
(which I used to perform when I was with Trisha’s company in the 1970s) strung out in the very long, Walter de Maria gallery with eight dancers instead of the usual five. This time it was Serenity in the Face of Higher Math. With the right arm they are counting 1; 1,2; 1,2,3, etc, while the left is counting 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 etc. with the simple motion of bringing the fingertips to the top of the head. It’s a diabolical coordination, done to metronome—with eyes closed. Diane Madden, rooted in place, led the group (though with all eyes closed, there was no such thing as following).

 


Opal Loop,
as I’ve said in a previous blog, is a beautiful essay on seeing and not seeing, and bringing nature to the stage. And have I mentioned that Dia: Beacon is an ideal place to see Trisha’s work—both its huge, daylit indoor spaces and the surrounding grounds.

 

The novelty of the day was that Trisha herself danced. At 73, she is lithe but fragile. She slowly intertwined limbs with one female dancer at a time. It was moving to see how each of the four dancers interacted with Trisha and supported her gamely, inventively, and lovingly.