Trisha Brown

/i>Roof and Fire piece
Media installation 1973


© Collection of Trisha Brown

*1936 in Aberdeen (US), lives in New York (US)
In the early 1960s, dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown began to explore everyday movements and places in terms of their functions and content. She had dancers perform on rooftops or walk along the walls of buildings tied to ropes. Her close contact to visual artists broadened her spectrum and inspired her to continually develop her vocabulary of movement. She founded the Trisha Brown Dance Company in 1970.

The video Roof and Fire Piece (1973) documents a performance which was spread over several rooftops in New York. One dancer initiated a movement and passed it on to the next one on another roof, and so on. After 15 minutes, the direction changed, and the last receiver became the sender. Brown here referred to a dance exercise whereby movements and sequences are copied. The dancers tried to stay exact, but their personal language of movements took on various articulations.