In the Steps of Trisha Brown
Dance (collection)
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1h 19m
Directed by Marie-Helene Rebois • Documentary • With Lisa Kraus, Carolyn Lucas & the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet • 2016 • 79 minutes
A unique figure in the history of contemporary dance, Trisha Brown has inflected its course in crucial ways. Her choices involve letting a certain chaos come inside with grace tied to imbalance and fluency prevailing over choreographic discipline. One of her most representative works, Glacial Decoy, an 18-minute piece created in 1979 with props and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, has just been included in the Ballet de l'Opera (Paris) repertoire. Marie-Helene Rebois, one so familiar with the world of dance to be remembered for her emotionally stirring RIBATZ, RIBATZ OU LE GRAIN DU TEMPS, devoted to re-discovering a work by Dominique Bagouet (winner of the FID2003 French Competition) shares this precious moment with us by showing dancers Lisa Kraus and Carolyn Lucas as they pass on their knowledge to those who will be performing this memorable work on Parisian stages. Both women's experience, their intimate knowledge of Trisha Brown's work, not to mention its difficulties and the deeply joyful energy it exudes (who could erase those big smiles from their faces?), transfigure this moment of sharing into a lesson for us. Filmed in such a way as to give the feeling that one single session was just run before our eyes, it is wonderful for us to see, as well as understand, everything at once through the intertwining of every step as it produces such a sharp image of our own bodies. '[Lisa] Kraus, with fellow teacher Carolyn Lucas, is a disciple of Brown's school of dance, and her centrality to Rebois's film gives it its infectious, unpretentious, accessible likeability. Telling her students just how important paradoxical notions of balance were to Brown's concept of [removed]turning the back leg one way, swaying the arms another), Kraus communicates in an easygoing manner. Rebois...
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