WORKS

Set and Reset/Reset

By Trisha Brown (1983) and Abigail Yager (Direction in 2021)
2021
Trisha Brown's seminal piece reworked by Abigail Yager with disabled and non-disabled dancers.

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:

Production details

Choreography of Set Reset (1983)

Trisha Brown

Direction of Set Reset/ Reset (2021)

Abigail Yager

Co-direction of Set and Reset/Reset (2021)

Jamie Scott

Set Design

David Lock (based on the original design by Robert Rauschenberg in 1983)

Lighting Design

Chahine Yavroyan

Costume Design

Celeste Dandeker-Arnold OBE (based on the original design by Robert Rauschenberg in 1983)

Special thanks (2021)

Eva Karczag for her support, invaluable insight into Trisha Brown’s choreographic practice and exquisite classes

Original dancers (2011)

Mirjam Gurtner, Dan Daw, Chris Owen, Darren Anderson, Victoria Malin, Elinor Baker, Annie Hanauer

Music with kind permission by

Laurie Anderson (Canal Street Communications/Laurie Anderson Studio)

Original restaging co-commissioned by

Dance Umbrella 2011

Year

2021

Running Time

25 minutes

Suitability

All ages

Journal