Ain’t it strange

Found in Movement Research Performance Journal # 51’s terrific portfolio on Tricia Brown:

from Yvonne Rainer’s “A Fond Memoir with Sundry Reflections on a Friend and Her Art” (2002):

“The Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky’s notion of ‘making strange’ is not easily brought to bear on dance . . .

“Another provocative Trishaism . . . indicative of a highly selective and critical consciousness that treads a narrow path between the familiar and the ambiguous, the recognizable and the hard-to-recognize . . .

“Specific emotions, implied in the gestures, were fleeting, evanescent, never underlined or made much of.  You had to be quick in your attention to catch them on the wing, which was their strength and beauty, their innovativeness.”

Jodi Melnick, collaborator and assistant:

“She would start rehearsal by asking, “How do you want to move today?” . . . She would laugh and say, “OK, let’s just do something that feels good on both of us.” It was like catching water running down a wall – fast, lucid, off in more directions than the eyes could see . . . shimmery.”

Susan Rosenberg:

“If you’re dancing without counting you don’t have that infrastructure bringing everyone together. Trisha’s work allows the dancers a certain agency in making the work and in negotiating its performance and reconstruction. . . . She never wanted to be pigeon-holed. She said it was like a pink, wet blanket being thrown on top of her.”

Denise Luccioni:

“At MOMA, Tricia and Burt [Barr] are given a private tour.  She follows the curator, not listening, not looking at the work; she is replicating the curator’s steps and gestures, exploring his movement in her own body, putting her feet where his were a second beforehand.  Immersed in embodiment, she’s working.”

Dorothée Alémany:

“Whenever Tricia wanted to hail a cab in the city, she would approach the edge of the sidewalk and suddenly kick her leg up to her head.”

Not necessarily