Blasts From The Past

Words like “slippery” and “fluid” come quickly to mind to describe Trisha Brown’s choreography, but what makes her work so fascinating is the intelligence, sophistication and wit with which it is designed. Yes, there is that luscious quicksilver quality, the way the dancers look amazingly supple and unhurried, but its beauty is supported by a rigorous structure. As part of its ongoing 40th-aniversary celebration, The Trisha Brown Dance Company is performing two small gems from her repertory at the Baryshnikov Arts Center this week.

Two exemplary, and contrasting, company members, Leah Morrison and Dai Jian, will alternate in performances of If You Couldn’t See Me, the intriguing 1994 solo in which Brown faced upstage the entire time. She collaborated closely with the late Robert Rauschenberg, who not only designed the costume and set, but also created the subdued and occasionally eerie sound score. Emphasizing the eloquence of the back and removing facial expressions from the mix, the solo seems to reveal an endless series of planes within the human form, as the dancer executes surprising, subtle shifts and twists, scoops and hinges.

Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503, a quartet created in 1980, is a major revival; it was last performed in 1996. As the dancers pursue both individual and overlapping pathways, sometimes forming fleeting alliances, Fujiko Nakaya’s “cloud sculpture” creates an environment of ever-evolving mist, generated by an upstage fog machine. Sometimes it shrouds the dancers, partially obscuring them from the audience. Beverly Emmons’ lighting enhances the possibilities. The premiere took place in a narrow Soho space, but as Brown began presenting her work in larger venues, it was transferred on two occasions to the BAM Opera House. These performances return it to a more intimate venue. But one aspect of the original spatial constriction is preserved: the dancers do not move beyond a 24-foot-wide area, since that was the size of the 1980 setting, explains Diane Madden, the veteran company member and rehearsal director who has staged this revival with painstaking attention to its details and conception.

Madden recalls attending Opal Loop’s June 1980 premiere. At the time, she was about to graduate from college and join The Trisha Brown Dance Company. She went on to perform two different roles in the piece. “I remember feeling that I was in this incredibly beautiful, magical environment. I felt the power of the whole theatrical aspect of it,” she says. Preparing a new generation of dancers to perform the piece (there will be two alternating casts), she applied her considerable insight and experience from performing Brown’s extensive repertory over the past 30 years.

“For me, the main challenge of Opal Loop is accepting the fluidity of the form, balancing that with a clear understanding of what it is you should be doing, and being in the moment—letting things go if they don’t happen exactly the way you’re trying to make them happen. Over the years we’ve learned about this piece in particular that a looser approach is better. I feel like it really shows the nature of the movement and the intention behind it better than if you try to nail down every moment.”

She mentioned a particular challenge the dancers encountered in learning the work. “In the final section of Opal Loop, two of the people are doing material from a 1979 Steve Paxton improvisation. The story I was told was that Steve had commented that he never remembered his improvisations. So as a gift to him, Trisha had Lisa Kraus learn a segment of his improv and perform it for him. That section of improvisation that she learned is in the end section of Opal Loop. So we’ve been working from video of that original Paxton material of him improvising in 1979. That movement, I think, has been a bigger leap for the dancers to familiarize themselves with [and] trying to figure out what is he doing, where it is coming from, what he’s playing with. It’s very unfamiliar, compared to Trisha’s movement.”

Madden continues, saying, “In general, as rehearsal director, my modus operandi has always been to try to re-create the process of the creation of the piece, to give the current dancers, as much as possible, an experience of what it was like to be there in the original’s moment so that they can really get inside of it, and understand the intention behind the dancing... More than anything in Opal Loop, the dancers were dancing with each other—and Trisha being in there, and all of her skill getting passed on to the people around her in a non-verbal way—I feel that’s really what the piece is about.”

> [Trisha Brown Dance Company]

Through April 11, [Howard Gilman Performance Space at Baryshnikov Arts Center], 450 W. 37 St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-868-4444; $25.