NO matter how well other companies follow in the steps of Trisha Brown's choreographies, watching her own dancers on-stage leaves you feeling you've heard her intensely particular movement vocabulary being spoken by "the natives" as it were.
And right from the opening solo, If you couldn't see me (1994), you're confronted by the originality and the quirky humours – of Brown's thinking and creative delivery. For as Leah Morrison stretches and scoops or eats up floor space with lithe, springy side-steps, you never see her full face. You do see her back. Shoulder blades, muscles and spinal column, all revealed in a low cut top, expressing an artistry you might well miss if you were (as instinct leads us) to gaze on her face.
Gazing, with an emphasis on eye contact, is a driving force in Les Yeux et l'ame (2011) which Brown derived from her own opera production of Rameau's Pygmalion. It's an elegantly phrased nod to classicism, but with an underlying playfulness that is also in the air of Foray Foret (1990). Music – by The Horns of Plenty – comes and goes off-stage, as if reminding us that life goes on beyond the limits of our sightlines. The dance too, flicks in and out of the wings – because the energies of this iconic American choreographer don't stop at invisibly imposed boundaries. Like the Running Girl solo, so superbly done in the final piece, For MG: The Movie (1991), Brown's work demands you re-think your ideas about time and space, as well as dance. Thanks to her exceptional dancers, this is an uplifting pleasure – sadly rare. They've gone already.
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