Trisha Brown Dance Company Commissions A Work To Honor Brown's Artistic Legacy

The Trisha Brown Dance Company has announced its first choreographic commission in celebration of the legacy of groundbreaking choreographer Trisha Brown.

This commission gives the 50+ year-old company an opportunity to engage with a contemporary artistic voice that has a connection to Brown's work, while reaffirming its primary role of preserving Brown's legacy. It marks the first time that the Company has asked an artist to create new work in conversation with Brown's trailblazing oeuvre.

TBDC has invited renowned Cuban-born choreographer Judith Sánchez Ruíz, who danced with the Company from 2006-2009, to be the first artist to receive such a commission. Currently a teacher and repetiteur of Brown's work, Sánchez Ruíz assisted Brown in the creation of I love my robots (2007), and L'Amour au théatre (2009), among others, and has been instrumental in restaging Set and Reset/Reset and Glacial Decoy. Her new original piece, Let's talk about bleeding, with musical direction and composition by Cuban composer Adonis Gonzalez, will premiere during the Company's Spring 2023 season at The Joyce Theater. TBDC's full program for the season will be announced in early 2023.

TBDC Executive Director, Barbara Dufty, says, "After years of being dedicated solely to the presentation and preservation of works by Trisha Brown, the Company believes it is now also important to place Brown's body of work in conversation with contemporary sensibilities. This venture reflects TBDC's commitment to keep Brown's work alive in today's dance landscape, while also fulfilling its primary mission of presenting Brown's own work."

"I have been very inspired watching Judith's artistic development over the years," says Associate Artistic Director Carolyn Lucas.

"Trisha was a rigorous investigator driven by insatiable curiosity. Like her, Judith uses structured improvisation, mines her own unique movement vocabulary, and uses tools such as drawings and scores to inform her creative processes. Her artistic sensibility, in collaboration with the dancers, will undoubtedly illuminate a provocative conversation."

Judith Sánchez Ruíz began her dance studies at the age of eleven at the National School of Arts in Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba.

The choreographer, performer, and teacher worked in New York City from 1999 to 2011, before relocating to Berlin. She has performed the works of notable choreographers including Sasha Waltz, Deborah Hay, Trisha Brown, Jeremy Nelson & Luis Lara Malvacias, DD Dorvillier, David Zambrano, Mal Pelo, and DanzAbierta, among others. She founded JSR Company in NYC in 2010, creating numerous choreographic staged works and site-specific projects with innovative composers and visual artists throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin American, and Asia. Sánchez Ruíz, has been awarded grants by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The American Music Center's Live Music for Dance program, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Her work has been commissioned by Danspace Project, Works & Progress at the Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, and Storm King Art Center, NY.

Since moving to Europe in 2011, her work has been presented at numerous venues around the world. Her work has been commissioned at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Storm King Art Center (NY), and she received a 2017 Residency Award at Choreographisches Centrum Heidelberg (Germany) and a 2020 DIS-TANZEN grant, sponsored by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, among others. Currently, an artist in residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, premiering December 9 at Lyric Theater, Hong Kong, and the guest choreographer at a multidisciplinary opera premiering January 27, 2023, at the Theatre of Münster, Germany.

Trisha Brown (1936-2017), artistic director and choreographer, was born and raised in Aberdeen, WA. She graduated from Mills College in 1958, studied with Anna Halprin, and taught at Reed College in Portland before moving to New York City in 1961. Instantly immersed in what was to become the post-modern phenomenon of Judson Dance Theater, her movement investigations found the extraordinary in the everyday and challenged existing perceptions of what constituted performance.

In 1970, Brown formed her company and made the groundbreaking work, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, one of many site-specific works created in, around, and hovering over the streets and buildings of her SoHo neighborhood. Her first of many collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg, Glacial Decoy, premiered in 1979, followed by Set and Reset in 1983 with original music by Laurie Anderson. Brown created nearly 100 dance works, including several operas. Also recognized as a visual artist, her drawings have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions including Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany; MoMA in New York; and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Brown was the first woman choreographer to receive the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Other honors included the Brandeis University's Creative Arts Medal in Dance, two John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships, a New York State Governor's Arts Award, and the National Medal of Arts. Brown was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 1988, elevated to Officier in 2000 and to Commandeur in 2004. She served on the National Council on the Arts from 1994 to 1997. She was honored with the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for making an "outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life." In 2013, she was honored with the BOMB Magazine Award and received the 2015 Honors Award given by Dance/USA.