Trisha Brown Dance Company: Program B

In the 1990s, Trisha Brown had amassed a reputation for avant-garde collaborations with cutting edge designers and composers, when she shifted into yet another sphere—choreographing for famed opera companies of Europe.

We highlight this stage of Brown’s evolution with Les Yeux et l'ame, an adaptation of Trisha Brown’s Pygmalion, a rendition of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s one-act opera based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which premiered in 2010 at Theater Carré, Amsterdam. French for "the eyes and the soul," the title is a variation of what the statue says to Pygmalion when she comes to life.

Sunday’s program also includes Foray Forêt, another collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg, featuring gold costumes and an open stage. The work is accompanied by a marching band outside the walls of the theater. This piece marks the beginning of Brown’s elegant and mysterious “Back to Zero” cycle, an investigation into unconscious movement.

Rounding out the afternoon’s program is Spanish Dance, performed by five dancers in front of the curtain and set to Bob Dylan’s voice singing Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Morning Rain; and Newark, a collaboration between Brown and painter/installation artist Donald Judd and post-minimalist composer Peter Zummo.