A 1990 performance of Trisha Brown’s “Set and Reset” (1983), with from left, Trish Oesterling, Brown and Wil Swanson. This photo by Mark Hanauer is part of Brown’s archive, which is going to the New York Public Library.
“In a video recorded in 1989, the choreographer Trisha Brown demonstrates a few restless seconds of movement, as dancers in her studio try to follow along. An arm darts across the torso; the legs appear to slip and catch themselves. It happens fast. As the dancers attempt to do as she does, a viewer can imagine how useful the video would be for anyone learning this material. There’s no easy way to explain what she’s doing; you just have to keep watching. In her decades of dazzling experiments with the body, gravity and momentum, Brown invented movement so complex — so capricious yet precise — it could be hard to remember from one day to the next, let alone years later if the work were to live on. …”
NY Times