UK: TRICIA BROWN , AMERICAN DANCE COMPANY PREPARES TO OPENS AT THE 36TH BELFAST ARTS FESTIVAL

Record ID: 388180

  • Title: UK: TRICIA BROWN , AMERICAN DANCE COMPANY PREPARES TO OPENS AT THE 36TH BELFAST ARTS FESTIVAL
  • Date: 6th December 1998
  • Summary: (PERFORMANCE CLEARANCES REQUIRED) VARIOUS 'TWELVE TON ROSE' DRESS REHEARSAL SPINNNG SHOT OF CEILING VARIOUS 'CANTO PIANTO' REHEARSAL
  • Embargoed: 21st December 1998 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAEQ9RXCSQION4V344H9OQP9693
  • Story Text: Flying through the air in a blur of motion, the award-winning American dance company, Tricia Brown, kicked off the 36th Belfast Festival this month, with a U.K premiere of three gravity defying sequences.
    Challenging the laws of dance and of nature, the Tricia Brown Dance Company, officially opened Northern Ireland's Belfast festival.
    Tricia Brown's dancers move with a beautiful fluidity, using abstract improvisation and a touch of humour.
    The name of one of the three sequences, 'Twelve Ton Rose', shows Brown's lighter side and its movements run completely contrary to the clumsiness implied in the title.
    'Set and Reset' is a slick, fast moving dance that features multimedia settings and jaunty costumes.
    The third sequence, 'Canto Pianto', takes its inspiration from the Greek myth of Orpheus and accompanied by Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.In graceful movements it tells of the brilliant musician whose devotion to his wife, Euridice, leads him to challenge death itself.But despite the abstract style, Brown's dances evolve in the same way as traditional dances.
    Brown's company has never had a traditional approach to music, though.In earlier work Brown didn't choreograph to music at all.Instead, she set her dances to silence and then added sound scores as a back drop.
    Continually refining her craft, the veteran dancer has moved away from her early dance experiments in the sixties, which involved walking up the sides of tall buildings of New York lofts.Since then she's experimented with dances that use ropes, pulleys and balancing acts to create the illusion of movement against the forces of weight and gravity.That way, she uses every possible area of the stage.
    When Brown's dance company is not touring, it is squeezing in time to work on a new dance.Brown is currently collaborating with the painter Terry Winters and jazz composer Dave Douglas to create a visual painting of music, art and dance.No work yet on when the multimedia show will will debut but, knowing Tricia Brown, there will be plenty of surprises.
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