01.05.2025 / þ thorns þ

Episode Eleven: Carolyn Lucas X Noé Soulier

þ thorns þ

This is a conversation between Carolyn Lucas and Noé Soulier. They reflect on the use of external physical forces in dance, the evolution of dance techniques, and Carolyn shares her experience of preserving the legacy of Trisha Brown’s work.

This is a conversation between Carolyn Lucas and Noé Soulier, Carolyn is the associate artistic director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company based in New York, and Noé is a choreographer and the director of the national Center for Contemporary Dance in Angers, France. We will hear them discuss the intricate relationship between structure and spontaneity in performance. They reflect on the use of external physical forces in dance, the evolution of dance techniques, and Carolyn shares her experience of preserving the legacy of Trisha Brown’s work.

Find out more about Carolyn and Noé on our People page.

To the Glossary Carolyn donates Chaordic .

And Noé donates Motor/Mobile and Reflexive Action. These definitions are coming soon.

This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant.

The series is co-curated by Emma McCormick-Goodhart and Martin Hargreaves, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.

This episode is a collaboration with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. This initiative supports choreographic heritage, nurtures contemporary creation and engages the widest possible audience in conversations about dance.

Transcript:

MARTIN:

Hello and welcome to þ thorns , a podcast where we bring you conversations between artists in relation to concepts of the choreographic . þ thorns þ is produced by the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells. This episode is a collaboration with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels. This initiative supports choreographic heritage, nurtures contemporary creation, and engages the widest possible audience in conversations about dance. To find out more, follow the link in the episode description. The artists you will hear in this episode presented their work at the Dance Reflections Festival in London in Spring 2025.

I’m Martin Hargreaves, Head of the Choreographic School, and as part of the ongoing imagination of the school , we are compiling a glossary of words that artists are using to refer to the choreographic . Every time we invite people to collaborate with us, we also invite them to donate to the glossary, which is hosted on our website. There is a full transcript available for this episode on our website together with any relevant links to resources mentioned.

This is a conversation between Carolyn Lucas and Noé Soulier. Carolyn is the associate artistic director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company based in New York, and Noé is a choreographer and the director of the National Centre for Contemporary Dance in Angers, France. In Dance Reflections, the Trisha Brown Dance Company presented a double bill. The first piece was In the Fall, a new commission choreographed by Noé in 2025, followed by Working Title, originally choreographed by Trisha Brown in 1985. We will hear them discuss the intricate relationship between structure and spontaneity in performance. They reflect on the use of external physical forces in dance, the evolution of dance techniques, and Carolyn shares her experience of preserving the legacy of Tricia Brown's work. This conversation was recorded with Carolyn in a studio in New York and Noé in Angers. The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are recordings that Carolyn has made of the Trisha Brown Dance Company's footsteps during rehearsals.

NOÉ:

So maybe we can, should we start with the glossary terms as a starting point?

I, kind of, brought two terms. I mean one is a distinction between motor and mobile. It's actually really old. It comes from Aristotle. It's present in Aristotle's physics. And it just describes this, this distinction between the motor being what sets things in motion or what guides the motion. What causes the motion also. And the mobile, it is what is subjected to motion. So, what is set in motion by the motor? And I often find it interesting to ask ourselves, what is motor and mobile in this movement? Or where is the motor and the mobile? Is it within the body? Is it beyond the body? Is it two different parts of the body? Is it one and the same part of the body being both motor and mobile? Or is it the whole body? So, this kind of, the way motor and mobile are mapped onto the body in different movements, I find quite stimulating to explore.

And I guess it would be also related to the second entry I would propose for the glossary. Which is the idea of reflexive action. And I think we often think about reflexive consciousness. The fact of being aware of oneself, or being conscious of oneself, or of one's thought. But what I mean by reflexive action is the fact of acting on one's own body, as opposed to acting on an external object. And the fact that then the body is both, yeah, the subject of the movement and the object of the movement, or if you want, the motor and the mobile. And this creates a really special relationship to yourself, in the sense that, I think you can experience yourself through action by aiming at yourself by being the target of your own action somehow. And it's a different way of experiencing yourself than thinking about yourself, or it happens within the action. And I think what I find really interesting in choreography, these different ways of acting on oneself and the different experiences of oneself they can yield. And I think Trisha Brown’s work, for example, in the way I see it, poses really specific way of acting on one's own body and ways of experiencing both one's own body, but I guess also for the spectator then, someone else’s body being acted upon itself, in this specific way. I guess that this is a different way of moving actually, and of moving oneself. And the different bodies they reveal in the different layers of ourselves that they revealed. It remains for me what I'm most interested in, in dance and choreography.

CAROLYN:

Thank you. This is gonna be fun.

They laugh together.

CAROLYN:

I didn't have the success I had hoped, looking in the dictionary, but I did find things that were inspiring.

So, I've just spent, since August, reconstructing Trisha's Unstable Molecular Cycle. So, it's three works chronologically, Opal Loop from 1980 Son of Gone Fishin’ 1981 and Set and Reset from 1983, which we haven't finished yet. And I was curious if there was one word that combined structure and spontaneity. Or one word that, within a structure, a path for a response to unpredictability is embedded, of course. I went down a rabbit hole, which was fun, and then this morning I actually spotted a word that I'd never seen. And I imagine the context of the word is larger than I could digest in the morning. But I did find a context for it in art. So, I'm gonna just read that. In the arts, a chaordic , I think is how you say it, a chaordic approach to art could involve embracing, spontaneity and experimentation while maintaining a sense of structure and purpose. It could also mean fostering a collaborative environment where diverse perspectives and ideas are valued. So, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, the thrilling magic that was created in the studio with Trisha every day. But that, that explanation, I found sort of like an inspiring mantra for maintaining a living legacy. And the word was actually coined by Dee Hock, where you just combine the words chaos and order, but it seems to have a very positive outcome. Yeah. So that's not a specific word, but that's what I'm bringing here in my glossary exploration.

NOÉ:

How do you think chaotic?

CAROLYN:

Chaordic . So it's C-H-A-O-R-D-I-C. So it's two words combined.

NOÉ:

Chaordic . Yeah.

CAROLYN:

Yeah, the meaning. The sounds and the meanings. Which was kind of fun!

NOÉ:

It’s great, yes. Uh, I feel like this dialogue between spontaneity and structure, I think it's really impressive in these three pieces you mentioned. And I think it's been also so influential later, on so many choreographers. And the question of how do you capture, in some way, a spontaneous, like something that organises itself spontaneously. And how do you capture it without killing it?

CAROLYN:

Exactly.

NOÉ:

Or without destroying it, by the very act of capturing it? It is really complex. Sometimes it seems for me to have a, like, I feel like because dance is also dealing with human beings and you cannot control a choreography in the same way that maybe you can control a sculpture, or a painting, because it's gonna be performed in different ways each time. And also, the way it's created in the first place is usually a collaborative process, with many kinds of energies and inputs, let's say. But it sometimes makes me think of urban planning, and of the failure of urban planning. When it tries to be excessively controlling. And the fact that it doesn't leave space for people to live in, somehow. So, it kind of defeats its own purpose. And I think that choreography has a similarity, that you have to find a way of proposing structure that can be lived in, even though it's in a shorter amount of time, like a performance or a process. But a little bit like a house, or a street, or a city that has to be lived in somehow. And there are many different ways to deal with that, I guess. But it's nice to think about it as a, kind of, open planning.

CAROLYN:

Mm-hmm.

NOÉ:

As opposed to a closed planning, so let's say.

CAROLYN:

It definitely, I think, takes confidence as a creator, to just have a structure that you're confident that it, you can open it to people's instincts and intuition. Or just, there's something, I feel that it's like a system that, sort of, provides a lot of energy. And you know, energy from discovering something unexpected, which is nice.

NOÉ:

And I think, also it’s funny because I was trying to guess which word you were gonna say, when you were talking about it. And I was thinking about emergence as, you know, a property that emerges out of a kind of spontaneous organisation or something like that.

CAROLYN:

That would have been good.

NOÉ:

Crystallisation also came to my mind.

CAROLYN:

Yeah.

NOÉ:

But so, what's funny is the structure, in somewhere, has to remain open to its multiple iterations. But it also often is born out of a process, which is itself, is not like a, a kind of top down, completely controlled process. And the contrary kind of is a way of, maybe it is a structure that emerges out of these processes happening in the studio.

Transition sounds: Dancer’s feet in the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsal room.

NOÉ:

The other thing I was thinking, is that sometimes, when…The way we are talking, you could imagine that the kind of structure that work best for that, are really open, blurry or something like that. And I often find that, sometimes the more the structure is defined and clear, in the way it is closed and open. So, it can be very open or very, very specific in what it demands. But I think the clarity of the, what is left open to interpretation and what is set, is often quite liberating. And I was surprised sometimes as like, sometimes a ballet variation, which is extremely set, it can give rise to really different and interesting interpretation, where you see a lot the input of the performer actually.

CAROLYN:

Yeah.

NOÉ:

Sometimes more so than in a complete, like in a jam, where you have no… Like, it's harder to say like, you know, what are the choices made by the participant? And what was the structure at the beginning? I think that a certain kind of clarity, in this division, is sometimes useful or fruitful, let's say.

CAROLYN:

Fruitful, yeah!

NOÉ:

Mm-hmm.

CAROLYN:

I like how you were talking about motor earlier. I think one of the things that I'm finding really, I don't know, interesting in the process of these reconstructions, is that there's sort of an underlying motor that makes the works tick in space and phrasing. And I would love to talk more about motor. I mean, I'm thinking of it almost as phrasing or rhythmic, a rhythmicity, that just, um, there's something fuelling the work.

NOÉ:

It's funny because watching the company rehearse, the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearse, and then I was in Angers and there were other choreographers coming to share their work, including a French choreographer called Gisele Vienne. For me, I think what struck me is that in Trisha Brown's work, because there is this fact that the physical forces like inertia and gravity are present in the very definition of the movement. So, I guess for me, if I look at ballet vocabulary, or Merce Cunningham, movements are mostly defined geometrically, in terms of shapes, lines, angles and so on. There are other, not only geometrically, they're also maybe, specific energy or specific, kind of, speed tensions and so on.

CAROLYN:

Negative space. Yeah.

NOÉ:

There is something with geometry, which is, which seems to be the kind of general structure owned, which these vocabularies are built.

And, uh, I was watching some of the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsals and then seeing different choreographers coming to Angers to share their work. Like Lia Rodrigues, or Gisele Vienne. And, in the case of Gisele Vienne, I found a kind of, uncanny relationship with Trisha Brown, in the sense that I feel like in Trisha Brown's work, as in the work of other choreographers from the Judson Church, Steve Paxton or some works by, by even Rainer or Simone, there is this inclusion, let's say, of this force, external forces acting upon the body. The gravity inertia. So, forces to which the body is subjected, and that we cannot get rid of. But that we don't fully control. Like these forces apply upon us in some way. And let's say in a really geometrical vocabulary, these forces, of course they're still taking place, but they're not really included in the definition of the movement. You are kind of, controlling the way you achieve this shape, the way you pass from one shape to another. Whereas when you yield to gravity, in a specific way, when you let gravity kind of make you fall in a certain way, or when you let inertia prolong the momentum that you generated, you give a place to this interaction with external forces, within the very definition of the movement. And for me, that's a huge shift, somehow. That's a huge…

There is one work by Gisele Vienne which is called Crowd, which kind of is based on a, it's like a rave party. But which is danced in really, really, really slow motion. And she kind of talks about when she was with the students, kind of sharing the work. So, because it's really, really slow, they start to look at each other and they cross each other's gaze. And they try to let, in some ways, the social forces you could say, by extension to the physical forces. But the social dynamics is maybe more… that take place between people, of whatever can take place when you cross it, each other's gaze, and act upon them. And I felt like this was a kind of extension of this move towards including and welcoming, in some way, these forces or these dynamics that are present in our relationship to the physical world. In the case of Trisha Brown, or to the social world. I think that his could be extended to the work of many other choreographers. Why did I say all that?

CAROLYN:

It's extraordinary that she could actually slow that down.

NOÉ:

Yeah. Yeah. They worked a lot. And it's funny because the way they slow it down is also, they use a lot of ideas coming from release and dropping the weight and so on, that themselves physically, I think come from, or are linked in many ways to Trisha Brown's work. So, the legacy is both, on a kind of physical practice.

CAROLYN:

Mm-hmm.

NOÉ:

Which slows down a lot, but where the relationship to weight is really present. And also, to this inclusion of external dynamics. In the way of shaping the movement. Or in the way of defining the movement, let's say.

Transition sounds: Dancer’s feet in the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsal room.

NOÉ:

But you were talking about motor. I don't, I, I think I was thinking about that, like maybe this motor, yeah. This motor as being not only internal to the body, but also being ways of riding almost this, uh, all these forces and motors that are, uh, applied or that we are subjected to in some way. Yeah.

CAROLYN:

I was thinking, uh, a little bit. Somehow just images from In The Fall just started to waft into my mind. And it's also probably a different motor, but I mean, I love working, watching you make In The Fall, but I've seen it performed many, many times and there's a really interesting thing that happens to me every time I see it. I get, uh, I don't know how to describe it. It it's like I become unaware of time passing when I watch In The Fall. It like time becomes something different for me than watching other works or just going through day-to-day life. It's sort of like I feel lost in some sort of suspension. Which is I think is really incredible. Bravo!

NOÉ:

Oh, thank you! I don't know where it might come from. I think one thing is In The Fall works a lot on accelerations, on ways of accelerating and the fact that the speed of acceleration and the rate at which it things accelerate itself accelerates throughout the piece or, or increases throughout the piece. There is this, but then it's funny because I think I was working, it's one of the piece where I started to work a lot with the idea of getting the body more horizontal or getting away from verticality or possibly facing every direction, the floor, the ceiling, all the walls of the room. And, uh, because I kind of like the. It's a loss of that. It, it generated a loss of the referential or I felt like I, I lost my footings with space a little bit by watching it.

CAROLYN:

That's so great.

NOÉ:

And maybe it affects the sense of time also. I dunno.

CAROLYN:

It does mine!

NOÉ:

And uh, it's also funny because, you know, when, um, now when it was performed in London, like a lot of articles or people commented on it being like so linked to Trisha Brown's work and so on. It was really funny because when we made it, I didn't work with references to, to Trisha's work. I really shared my approach to movement. And we did it in a very rigorous and, and, uh, kind of, we stuck to it in a way. And also, I appreciated the fact that there was no, there was no incentives from, from your part, from the company to create, uh, obvious relationships or anything. And I remember even talking with you about the fact there was such different physicality and that it was somehow that it would ask a specific work from the performer to switch from one to the other.

CAROLYN:

I, and I think I remember, you know, there's an idea about Trisha's work, that it's really organic. I think it is to some degree, just based on her relationship to her own anatomy and sequencing and geometry and negative space and use and everything. But you had mentioned that you felt like your approach - I hope I'm correct but I do have this memory, maybe I'm not putting in it in the right context - But that was more inorganic. Do you… does that ring a bell or?

NOÉ:

Yes, yes. Absolutely. No, I think I, I really like to try to find paradoxical movements. Or movements where I, for example, I will ask that, ask a, a lot of explosivity and, and, and speed and power, but at, at the same time, the end of the movement is really relaxed. So you have at each movement to find this opposition. Things like that, or movement that are, you know, you are going towards something, but before you reach it, you have to go towards something else. You have to somehow almost fight your, your own engagement into the previous movement or something like that. And I think it was partly a reaction to doing a lot of Trisha Brown as a student and also a lot of Forsythe. And I felt that the idea of fluidity is economy of means in the use of energy were really, uh, highlighted or, uh. And I was, at the beginning, I was really like, okay, I want to do something that has a lot of contraction. Because I felt like there was a certain dimension of bodily experience that was a bit excluded from that wonderful free floating, this feeling of absolute ease that you get sometimes, which is amazing. And I was like, well, my life doesn't feel very easy! I mean, my life is super easy actually, compared to other lives, but I, I just felt like we, I felt like, are living in a time which was very contradictory and with lots of tension and with lots of opposite directions, a lot of contradictions basically. And I think. Yeah, on a very kind of intuitive level, I, I felt like I wanted to do that physically at the beginning. But then I think what happens is when you do that, you have to be careful not to injure yourself. And, and the thing is working with people, with the dancers from the Trisha Brown Dance Company that are also such experts at finding, you know, clever ways in the use of energy, weight and so on, it allowed to go further in some way…

CAROLYN:

Oh, that's great.

NOÉ:

…In that movement idea that you could go further in the inorganic, in the contradiction, in the contrast of energies, uh, within a, a movement sequence. By having a high ability to actually do organic and, and thing, and to use your energy in a clever way, you could go even further in that somehow. It was quite exciting to do that.

CAROLYN:

I think the only way I, I can, let's say capture, like being in the audience. I mean, I think it's what I see with the two works - they're not juxtaposed, but just one after the other. I find them to be very powerfully unique, but that they sort of resonate together. So maybe become, I don't know, that's all.

NOÉ:

No, I think you're right.

CAROLYN:

I think resonance is very abstract but very powerful.

NOÉ:

No, they do really resonate also for me, and I also think in some way, I think this reaction to Trisha Brown's work, the thing that's really common is the, the focus on movement research, I think, and on, on really trying to find specific ways of, of generating movement and of organizing movement somehow, and. I really also feel and know that she's one of the choreographers that most influenced me, even though we never met. But through her works somehow and through studying some of her works. It was really touching when we were rehearsing and that Lance Gries came in the studio and I had learned Set and Reset with him in P.A.R.T.S many years before that. And, and it had been a huge influence to learn Set and Reset with Diane Madden, with Lance Gries and with Trina. And Abby was, it was a lot of, of, of dancers from the company.

I, I think that also this reaction like reacting towards, even though in some ways opposing, in some way continuing, that creates a really deep bond, a really deep connection. I think maybe deeper than even if you just emulate the style, if you imitate the style somehow. I also feel like, I think, one of the things that I really admire in Trisha Brown's work is, how she developed the research over several decades and how she could build on aspects of her previous research. Like kind of starting with this very short performances, really work, and then building up to the works of the seventies that get more complex, and then the stage work of the eighties that get even more complex and so on, and progressively integrating different aspect of a dance performance as like composition music sets, uh, costumes, lighting into a coherent whole, but not in one piece, in three or four decades of research. That, that's like pretty amazing.

And the other thing is the coherence. It's so hard to make a piece where you find some kind of coherence from the way in which each specific movement is generated, the way sequences are built, the way bundles of sequences are put together, the way dancers interacts, the general composition of the piece, whether it's 20 minutes or one hour, but even like in a 20 minutes piece and the set, the costume, everything that somehow it all make, does it make a coherent proposition that's really, really hard too. Coherent, but also not really limited. Because if she makes something extremely simple, of course it's easier to make something coherent. But that's what's amazing in her work is that it's quite diverse actually. And sometimes including elements that should not work very well together or don't seem like they would work very well together, but,

CAROLYN:

...but that's the fun part of it! Yeah.

NOÉ:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're surprisingly coherent. That's, yeah.

CAROLYN:

Yeah. There's a, something that Trisha said in an interview. I think it was outdoors at Jacob's Pillow. And she was talking about all the mechanisms that she worked with in the unstable molecular cycle, for example, like looping, like you have this very intricate phrase and you keep looping backward to move forward. And at the end she said it was an unwieldy system and I don't work with it anymore. And I thought to myself, “oh my God!” 'cause when I, I mean I think that some things like have this ability, whether you think you leave them to stay present in a different form.

So, when I joined the company, they were building Lateral Pass, which I was involved in a bit. But then the next thing was really Newark. And there was this concept of coming into the studio, and I think it was still related to Trisha throwing movement and us catching it. You're just standing there and Trisha is very fearless, very multi-directional, and super sequential, and all of a sudden outta nowhere, she's just like, you know, arm-leg-like- twist-with-like-you know-ha! you know, it's all, and you see it, you're like, aah! And um, she turns around and she looks, and you had that one opportunity to like, to just catch it. I, I mean, it's a simple word, but it's so much going on in your mind and body, your visual, your physical, and to me that still had sort of an, uh, unwieldy experience. And so I think sometimes there are these incredible affinities that people have and they keep exhausting them. But I think that they resurface in different ways too. But some of these things that required a response were so, I mean, it was really engaging. 'cause you would just have to throw every cell of your body into like, being awake, alert and alive.

NOÉ:

I think it, it's so hard to. Generate movement coordination that are not yet known. It's like,

CAROLYN:

I don't know how she did it!

NOÉ:

Like, uh, but I think what's interesting is in the process you described, I feel like she really did it with you in the sense that she could generate this, maybe this bursts of this kind of sudden explosion of, of movement, but she could not watch it at the same time and recreate it herself. So...

CAROLYN:

definitely

NOÉ:
...it was really a kind of the generation of this new movement coordinations was depended on this collaboration somehow where, because I guess when you reconstructed it on the spot, you made something different for, it could not be exactly the same that was influenced by that, but it was also in some way your own.

Transition sounds: Dancer’s feet in the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsal room.

So, when I started making my own work, I chose to work with like goal-oriented actions like hitting, avoiding, throwing. And at the same time to find, to include distortion so that these goals were really clear for the performer, but not recognizable for the audience. So the object that we are aimed at were not present, or the body parts that were involved were not fitting the goal. So like hitting with fragile body part, like the ribcage or the, the throat or the inside of the elbow. And this was very much linked to an analysis, like a really cold analysis of what I said before. Okay. Ballet, neoclassical, dance, modernist, kind of geometric, Trisha. And, uh, this generation is more like physics, mechanics, forces and so on. And this way of using this practical goal, I felt like I could capture, if you like, as you said before, I could capture other dimensions of movements. Like if you think of hitting something, there is a certain muscle tone. There is a certain affect also a certain, some kind of, maybe not quite an emotion, but something like a way of dealing with energy, which is already effective or emotional in some way, which is different from avoiding or throwing and so on.

At the beginning, it was really hard to build movement that way with this distortions and so on. So it was really move-by-move very tediously first on my own. Then with other people, building sequences like movement one, movement two, movement three, kind of stopping at the end of each movement and finding, and another movement that could be built, that could be grafted upon it almost…It was very time consuming. But what I liked is that it allowed me to get outside of movement logics or patterns or coordination that I would have if I was improvising, for example. But then after several years working like that, I felt a bit stuck. Like I felt like now if I would build, move sequences, move-by-move like that, I would find the same kind of patterns happening again. So they were not improvisational patterns, but they were kind of compositional patterns, like the limit of what I could conceive mentally. And then, then I started working with improvisation again and then filming these improvisations.

And the idea was working with the same tasks, but the fact that it was in real time. So it was the same task, but in real time it, it obliged, sometimes you could not control or predict what was gonna be the next move and often you would put yourself in dead ends, in impossible. In situations where it's really not obvious if there can be a next move and these were the most interesting moment because then you kind of save yourself to generate that new move. And you tap in a deeper, maybe not, I dunno if it's a deeper, but another movement instinct, another spontaneity, which is completely different from the spontaneity you have if you put music on and you dance, but a spontaneity that that only appears once you're pushed to the limit of what you can conceive or plan in some way. And this got really interesting and that's what I tried to do at first with the company, but it didn't work really well. At first I thought it was like imaginary object. And then the, the, we did it with image. It, it worked quite well for some people, some sequences. But then what I liked is that we worked a lot with tasks that were first relational. You know, a dancer would put their hand on, on the body of the other dancer somewhere and they would push the hands and then, and like quite fast improvising like that. And then removing the dancer that, that indicated body parts to push and just keeping the other dancer, which was very hard to reconstruct for them. But exciting.

And I think most of the sequences, most of the solo sequences of in the fall are generated as duets. And then one of the partner is removed. And then there are a few ones that are, uh, really duets. Like actually, there's only one actually moment that. Yeah. And I kind of like this idea that instead of the group or the duet being derived from solo material. Here, the solo material are derived from...

CAROLYN:

It's fantastic!

NOÉ:

...duets or relations in between bodies.

CAROLYN:

Yeah, it was extraordinary to watch you process that. It makes me think about a larger, you know, I have a very, how do you say, design-oriented relationship to negative space in the sense of, well, from childhood, but just within Trisha's work. Reconstructing, there's so many geometries that, that are overlapping, and the negative space becomes so important, but this is even like an extension of that. In a way, what you're talking about.

NOÉ:

That’s nice, I never thought about it that way. Like kind of, yeah negative momentum or something like that.

CAROLYN:

That’s powerful.

NOÉ:

Negative impulse. Yeah.

CAROLYN:

It was a really nice tool you came up with.

NOÉ:

And then it's really funny because I was really excited about this new tool and then I made another piece with my own company. It didn't work at all.

CAROLYN:

Well that's okay!

NOÉ:

Yeah. It's totally okay. It was really funny. It's not like it didn't work it, it didn't work very well, and I was really thinking, wow, it's, it's amazing how much you have to adapt to, uh, what works well for whom, in which context, somehow.

CAROLYN:

Yes.

NOÉ:

And uh, that's what's very enriching about collaborating with different groups of dancers. I think I was surprised that the dancers, I felt like they had this, we saw training and grounding in some modern dance techniques, depending for whom, but also like Cunningham technique or things like that.

CAROLYN:

Oh yeah.

NOÉ:

And it's funny because I feel like in Europe, at least in France or in in Belgium where I studied in P.A.R.T.S, we tend to skip the modern dance training, kind of go from ballet if you did ballet, but let's say, in my case. But I think it's quite common. So in P.A.R.T.S , for example, you will study some kind of ballet, like ballet for contemporary dancer, and floor work, Trisha's Set and Reset, release kind of work. Things like that. And you skip the modern dance component, let's say. It was such a joy to work with people that had this grounding instead of a kind of ballet base. They had more like a modern dance space. They did have some ballet. It was clear. But I think that the core of that technique was, and I felt like it gave a clarity in the use of space, in the alignment of the body and so on. In three dimensions, which was amazing to deconstruct or to work with.

CAROLYN:

Oh, that's fascinating.

NOÉ:

And then I was like, wow. That's what we miss when we do Trisha. It's, we train Trisha a lot, because we don't have the modern training. We lack the architecture to, to, we lack a comp, a component of the architecture somehow. So because we have a school in, I'm really curious about reintroducing Cunningham now. Oh yeah. Think some Cunningham at least!

CAROLYN:

Yeah. I mean that's, I've been doing this for too long to track it way. 'cause I went away to like a boarding school for dance when I was 15 or something. I mean, things make positive shifts, but things remain valuable. I really couldn't keep up with the ballet myself. But I had to learn how to try and I had to learn how to try Graham. I enjoyed working with the Cunningham technique. And the Limón technique when I was in college. It's, I don't know, it's an amazing thing. I had really never heard of Trisha Brown when I was in college, and I missed my dance history. I would've if I'd been in my dance history class. But we had a, I performed with the Limón company, so I was getting credit for that.

But I did see Trisha when, when I was 19 years old. I tell this story a lot 'cause even now I'm still astounded by the good fortune of it. But there was a continuing education student in my composition class and she came up to me and she said, I wanna take you to see Trisha Brown. I went and… I've actually been looking at videos shot on a diagonal at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1981, and I'm like, “oh my God, I was in the audience watching this program!” It was Glacial Decoy, Opal Loop, Instead, Son of Gone Fishin and it just changed my life. I was, so, I think it, um, everything for me changed then.

So I think I was more just overwhelmed by the movement itself, I couldn't even take in the genius of the choreography really. And then I, I had been doing a lot of teaching myself to dance at night after the classes and making my own movement. And I think that somehow, I wasn't copying, 'cause I just saw it once, but some phenomena entered my body or my nervous system from seeing movement like that. And so it was nice that I did have that in my background, the modern dance, the ballet and the modern. But it was amazing to like just shapeshift when I came to New York and sort of abandoned it. But there's amazing things about strength in your, strength in your muscular system and also line that we learn mm-hmm. And these techniques and they work really well in Trisha's work.

NOÉ:

Yes, that's true

CAROLYN:

So, and I think dancers, especially in this day and age, they need to have so much versatility that it's sort of like have to access many techniques really right away. Right? So there are less dance companies that are, that where you can employ your dancers full time. So people are shifting from.. Uh… which I am in really great admiration of, I would not have been able to do that as a dancer myself in the eighties.

NOÉ:

Yeah. I think it's also such a different kind of involvement in the work when you focus more on one approach.

CAROLYN:

Yeah.

NOÉ:

And also when you are involved in the development of that approach, because then when you are, the dancers that I meet that are more in repertory companies, including doing creations and not doing only repertory, but they will do one piece with a choreographer. Yes, they do take part in the development of that approach, but of a small amount of time somehow. And so yeah, it's such a different kind of collaboration, let's say.

Transition sounds: Dancer’s feet in the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsal room.

NOÉ:

It is also interesting because listening to you, I was thinking how sometimes we, when we think of the succession of movement techniques or approaches to the body approaching to movement, approaches to composition, we think of the opposition sometimes how Cunningham is different from Graham. And Graham has this expressivity and sense of contraction and breath and so on, and Cunningham technique has this abstraction and this kind of, and then the formal rigidity and geometry of Cunningham. As opposed to the kind of freedom of energy of Trisha or things like… I'm really on purpose caricaturing them.

CAROLYN:

Yeah.

NOÉ:

But in some way, I think you can also see them as growing from each other in some way.

CAROLYN:

Definitely.

NOÉ:

As like in some way you could also conceive Trisha Brown's work and technique as kind of taking, taking root in Cunningham's work and pushing it it somewhere, or taking it somewhere somehow. But there is this nice idea in Hegel's philosophy. I mean, it's very popular of Aufhebung, of this idea of something that is both the opposition and the continuation of something. What I find nice is a metaphor it takes of, in a way, when a bird becomes a flower. The flower is both a destruction of the bird in some way because once it's a flower, it's not a bird anymore. Or when the flower becomes a fruit, but it's also the continuation or the, the flower was a, was a potential fruit in some way, but when the fruit really appears, the flower is no more somehow. And think of this succession as some kind of flourishing of that kind in some way. Which destroys, but also builds upon or kind of develops what was there potentially in some way.

CAROLYN:

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very interesting. I think, especially with thinking about technique and Trisha's work. I think, um, Trisha worked around the clock. She really wanted to provide a lot of things for her dancers like health insurance and all that kind of stuff. And I think she was so interested. I think that other modern choreographers had an interest in creating a technique and having schools , and I think Trisha had that. But I think what overrode that was just this unquenchable curiosity to create her own movement vocabulary. It's very difficult to, I think there's principles in her work that are identifiable, but I think her whole time she was like just moving on and moving on and moving on with creating more and more and more unique vocabulary. So, and it's also difficult to say that the repertory is the technique. But in a way it is like, I mean, there's access to technique and foundation and principles. Even from the beginning or like Locus or something. So yeah, it would've been great if there was, uh, 34 hours in a day for her with the technique.

NOÉ:

Yeah. But I think one of the things that struck me is how much the dancers that used to be in the company, because a lot of them came to, in New York when we showed the, in the last rehearsals, when we showed the kind of, when the, their generosity and involvement and passion. And it's rare. It's rare that you have, if I think of other company, I feel a lot of dancers being in a more complicated space in relationship to the work and the legacy and so on. Like where there is like more mixed feelings. Oh, maybe there are mixed feeling in that case too. But what I mean is here I feel like I felt like a sense of, of ownership. Uh, not in a bad way, but in a way where they, in..

CAROLYN:

… a good way.

NOÉ:

Yeah, It felt like it was also their own somehow, and that there was also, uh, really keep involved in it still and involved in the future of it, or involved in what's going on with it somehow. Yeah. Yeah. And that was really beautiful. So

CAROLYN:

I love that. It's so wonderful to have so many generations active and happy and sharing. And I mean, how can you maintain something without that? I mean, yeah, you can, but it brings a richness to I think, very specifically the dancers.

NOÉ:

Mm-hmm. But I was wondering because. Yeah, I wondered what, what made that possible over such a long time? 'Cause she seemed really, uh, demanding. I mean, she seemed like she demanded a lot of her dancers in terms of, I dunno, how she managed to create an ecosystem that still survives her in some way. And where people found their place - its quite special or what was specific to the way of working together that could generate that somehow?

CAROLYN:

I think, um, Trisha was demanding, but she was incredibly generous. So there was that sense of being in a team, maybe. Her direction was very clear. Her, for the most part, her work is completely set. It's not improvised on stage. But there was this beautiful process where somewhere within the process, the clarity of the idea, there was always something that would be asking for the dancer's response to something.. You know, whether it's, I'm going to create a collision course and you're gonna run on this diagonal and you're gonna run on that diagonal, and Diane's gonna jeté and you're gonna run into her legs and she's gonna spin. You know, these are great. I mean, this takes a lot of confidence, but there's no way that you can't not feel a part of that conclusion of that idea. And yeah, so I think that there were always mechanisms in place where the dancers really felt, felt like a part of the creation. So, I think that that involves a lot of trust. And I think, like, when, trust is beautiful, 'cause you can carry that trust and for years and years and years, so

NOÉ:

That's true.

CAROLYN:

You know, maybe that's part of the origin of why we have so many active alumni.

NOÉ:

That's great. trust in the process that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that sounds like something to.

CAROLYN:

I think it empowers people to share the process when Trisha's not here with us.

NOÉ:

I feel like there is a certain timelessness in her work. That is not there by chance, but that is a result of, uh, trying to, to indeed create something that would not be only of her time. And there, that's something that seems quite, I, I think it's, I really like this idea in dance because dance is quite ephemeral. But the idea that you try to create something that will not only speak to the people that share your contexts of your cultural context, like here and now.

And I think that's something that's hard to pursue today. That somehow there is such a, such an acceleration of, of things in terms of, at every level that the very attempt to generate of work of arts, not that it becomes a mausoleum that stays there for centuries, but that in principle that potentially could be meaningful to people in, in other space and times, let's say, in the past or the future, but probably in the future. In that case. It's the same way that they were, that some works were conceived in the past as sometimes for religious purposes in the past. But out as outliving us in some way. Like the, I think that's something that I, I seen in, in, in the rigor and coherence and effort to, yeah, to not just make something that is just commenting on what's going on, uh, precisely. Now, uh, this is something that I find very inspiring and not easy to pursue in some way 'cause of the incentives that we have as a 'cause in Angers we also program a season and, uh, uh, festival and so on, and. I wonder how to keep that alive in some way.

CAROLYN:

It's really difficult. I mean, I think I will say that Trisha was fortunate to be supported in having long processes. So, she had the ability to explore things that she just couldn't, she couldn't be satisfied with. She'd just toss like something, boom! gone. And then she would find like this, you know, amazing resolution or not even resolution or an amazing way to generate what she wanted more clearly. I think that we're all working at faster speeds now.

NOÉ:

Yes. And I think it's both in like the rehearsal time and the fact that, even the fact that she would develop cycles, which I find really great. That you can develop a research or an endeavour over five or years where each piece is a, is a step in that process. Yeah. Like, it's not, I think even it has changed from when I started making works in 2010 and today. So I think it was possible for me to go see a, a producer and say, well, I want to create a dance. And so he would ask what's it about and stuff, and I would be like, well, you know, my I, I've come to analyse this and that in geometrical term and this and that and like that I was going to invest in movement research on working with this action for this and that reason and that it would take me years probably. And people would still support that, but I don't know if people would support that today. That's a question I have. I would definitely support that, you know, in Angers, if someone comes up with that kind of proposal.

TRANSITION SOUNDS: dancers in the studio

CAROLYN:

It's over a decade since Trisha retired and, I don't know, several years since she passed away. But I'm constantly, no matter how much I study, I'm still learning more and more. I guess one of the things that's interesting is, Noé was mentioning our relationship to our alumni, which definitely fuses energy and empowerment for the dancers, and then also using the archive. I'm in a position now where I rely or don't, I'm gonna say rely less because it's impossible not to rely on one's own memory, but I rely less on my memory and I've gotten to a place where, so like I danced a role of Eva Karczag’s and Set and Reset, or I originated a role with Trisha in Newark sometimes, like in the past, if I'm studying the video or something, it's hard not to track the rest of the work through that person, right?

But now, for better or for worse. I feel like I'm learning to really see, I have to look at every single person all the time. And it's it, there's so much to, I mean, learn is one word, but there's also so much to see and take care of. And so I do now go back to the actual building of the works, even if I was in them and I just study and remind myself of the process. So for example, in Working Title, which is an early iteration of Lateral Pass, which, at some point it's not sustainable to take the sets and the costume and do the flying. It's financially not sustainable. And so there's always this awareness, you know, that there's something you know missing and the flying is missing in Working Title.

But when I went back to study the building, they started building it without the flying and it was hilarious. It was like they were just being so goofy. I don't know if that was the instruction. I don't really know. 'cause sometimes there's not audio, or no sound. So like I'm always, I try to find things that can enhance, like the work today. So I try to, sometimes I think it's difficult for the dancers to look at video, but I'm trying to find ways of sharing parts of the process with them that might enhance their experience in the reconstruction. It is much easier to look at one video of a piece, but I don't think that that's sustainable. And I don't know if I have found the right order. 'cause like with the Unstable Molecular Cycle, I just went back to the original building and you know, it comes in snippets or shots on a diagonal or this or that. And maybe I should have started with one run and then try to bring more to it. But I tried to go the other way and we'll see how it turns out. I'm happy that I have the archive so that I have that ability to honour my memory, but work from more memories actually that were recorded.

NOÉ:

I find it interesting that sometimes the more people know, the more people have been part of it, the more humble they're with their knowledge and it's quite impressive that maybe because there is this trust and confidence in the knowledge, because it's actually there somehow,

CAROLYN:

All the generations that are connected to Trisha, I think it can cycle into younger dancers with more, I don't know, more competence. Or more like a meat hold on to, I dunno what to say. That's kind of a weird thing coming outta my vegetarian mouth!

NOÉ:
And also there was something funny, is that because of this habit of working with the archive, I think In The Fall is the best archived piece I have ever made because Carolyn archived everything in such a thorough and methodical way and it was really was amazing that the process was taken so seriously. Because when you're in the making of doing it, you're like, yeah, that was interesting.

CAROLYN:
And it might not even be so necessary in the moment or the near future, but that's something where I think like. years from now or something. I think it could be the door opening into a process. You know, where you can really understand process more. So I think that I'm really interested in that. I think Trisha was really interested in that. I think we were like lucky to find that relationship, which really developed when Trisha was making …See Me and I had an accident and stopped dancing. And so, we had established this connection of interest in process, with video and documentation. I didn't know anything, I didn't have any equipment. But yeah, I'd rather record more the process than less.

NOÉ:

And that's also one of the things that strikes me with Trisha Brown is that she's dancing in some incredibly complicated pieces, like Set and Reset. Yeah, I guess she saw Set and Reset after when she passed on the role. Right?

CAROLYN:

Uh, you know, I wish that there was more in the archive to really be able to answer that. I know that in Set and Reset, Iréne Hultman was her understudy and then took her role. But I'm so curious.. how on earth did she make Opal Loop? and I mean, Son of Gone Fishin she was on the outside.. in Glacial and Opal Loop and Set and Reset to some degree. I see there's archival footage of her building the phrases alone, you know, and I'm just like, there's even something where. I've recently found her teaching an Opal Loop. This is unheard of. So, teaching an Opal Loop phrase to Eva, Lisa and Stephen, it's just so, it's just a small fragment, but it was like, oh wow. You know, there was always this imagination of throwing and catching. But I do know that she would step outside often. Like you can see that in the videos of Set and Reset where they're running something, and she's not present in the building. But it is amazing how one could be in both places. I don't know how to answer because it's really must have been super complex

NOÉ:

Indeed.

CAROLYN:

But also trusting her form, you know, trusting her structure probably helped.

Transition sounds: Dancer’s feet in the Trisha Brown Dance Company rehearsal room.

MARTIN:

Thank you, Carolyn and Noé for this conversation. And thank you to Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels for this collaboration. For the transcript of this episode and for resources mentioned in the conversation, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now. This podcast series is a Rose Choreographic School production, it’s produced and edited by Hester Cant, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening, goodbye.

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