Set and Reset/Reset

Trisha Brown Dance Company premiered Set and Reset in 1983 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. It is the Company’s signature work and confirmed Trisha Brown as a leader of abstract choreography. For the creation of Set and Reset/Reset, Candoco Dance Company was an integral part of both the creative process and the end result.

Rather than adapt the choreography to the performers, here the performers can happily adapt themselves to the choreography, and no matter whether they’re spinning a wheelchair, swinging a crutch or just extending an arm, it all just works – beautifully.

★★★★ The Guardian

In 2011, 2016 and now in 2021, former Trisha Brown Dance Company member Abigail Yager taught the Candoco Dance Company dancers exact sequences from the original choreography and later guided them in an extensive improvisation process whereby they used the same set of instructions that Brown gave to her Company in 1983: keep it simple, act of instinct, stay on the edge, work with visibility and invisibility, and get in line. 

Abigail Yager on the restaging: The Set and Reset/Reset Project examines the shifting nature of choreography in relation to underlying structures that anchor a dance to itself. The process of re-construction (as opposed to replication) is a negotiation between freedom and limit – an exploration of possibility as the dancers create a new version of Trisha Brown’s landmark choreography.

Trisha Brown on the original choreography: I was asked, at the time, to title the dance before it was choreographed. I was considering my earlier anti-gravitational dances, such as Walking on the Wall as the set, my background as the background. Robert Rauschenberg entered the project soon after. His initial idea for a set, uncannily, a living set. Bob uses the expression “visual presentation” for his work on my stage. The moving images of the slides and films have a random relationship to the specific events of the dance, however, simultaneity becomes interaction. It’s all one thing in the end.

While the fluidity of motion makes it all seem simple, we’re actually watching a complex human geometry unfold. Crucially, the sheer joy of movement shines through.

The Stage

Find the digital programme (including access content and insight materials) here.

Promotional trailer

Audio description:

Insight films: