Obituary - Trisha Brown, influential dancer and choreographer

Died: March 18, 2017

TRISHA Brown, who has died aged 80, was a hugely influential choreographer and one of the founders of the postmodern dance movement. Often staged in silence, her works rejected the traditional forms and rules of dance – sometimes, her dancers would move according to a mathematical formula; sometimes they would dance up and down walls using ropes and pulleys; always, it was an extraordinary experience.

Brown was born in the city of Aberdeen in Washington State and was interested in dance from a young age; she would sometimes dragoon her brother into dancing with her. The landscape was also a huge influence. “I’ve always said that the forest was my first art lesson,” she said. “I climbed trees, played sports, hunted and fished. My boundless energy was also formally funnelled through the study of ballet, tap and acrobatics.

At first, she studied traditional modern dance in California, earning a degree in 1958, but it was not for her and, after moving to New York, she helped found the avant-garde Judson Dance Theatre Group. One of her major influences at the time was Merce Cunningham, one of the first choreographers to see dance as independent from music, but it was an improvisation workshop led by Anna Halprin, the pioneer of experimental dance, that changed the direction of Brown’s life and work. “My intuitive process was cracked opened and encouraged,” she said. “I’ve been smitten with improvisation ever since and I’ve spent decades pursuing this elusive practice.”

In 1970, she formed her own eponymous dance company and within a few months she was creating pieces that would influence other dancers and choreographers for decades, and continue to do so. In Roof Top, her dancers danced on the roofs of Manhattan apartment blocks while in Walking they moved along walls while suspended in harnesses.

In the 1980s, Brown’s reputation continued to grow; a season of her work was staged at the City Centre in New York and her company aso toured the work the world. In 2012, the Trish Brown Dance Company came to the Tramway in Glasgow in a performance which The Herald’s dance critic Mary Brennan said was an uplifting pleasure. “Brown’s work demands that you rethink your ideas about time and space, as well as dance,” she said.

By the 1990s, Brown was beginning to relax her rules about staging her performances in silence (“I got fed up with listening to all the goddam coughing,” she said) and began introducing pieces of classical music into her choreography. She was inspired by, among others, Bach, Schubert and Bizet and in 2002 staged Schubert’s Winterreise with the baritone Simon Kennlyside.

It was announced in 2011 that Brown, who had been suffering from dementia, would be retiring, but she and her company continue to be influential – her 1983 work Set and Reset is particularly beloved by dance fans. As for her own take on her work in guiding dancers, Brown put it this way: “My job is to guide them to make wondrous choices without diminishing their spirit.”

Trisha Brown was pre-deceased by her husband, the designer Burt Barr, and is survived by her son and four grandchildren.