Northrop and the Walker Art Center Present
Trisha Brown Dance Company
With Merce Cunningham Trust
Tue, Nov 11, 7:30 pm
Step into a century of genre-blending creativity with Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) and Merce Cunningham Trust’s (MCT) Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown & Cunningham Onstage. To celebrate the 2025 centennial of the visionary American artist Robert Rauschenberg, TBDC unites the work of iconic 20th-century artists for an evening of dance featuring visual presentations designed by Rauschenberg. The program includes Trisha Brown’s beloved Set and Reset, set to music by Laurie Anderson, alongside Merce Cunningham’s Travelogue, a large-scaled vaudevillian pièce de résistance with music by John Cage—which hasn’t been staged by a professional company since 1979. In conjunction with the performance, the Walker Art Center will exhibit its collection of Rauschenberg scenery and costumes for Trisha Brown Dance Company in Glacial Decoy, on view Jun 26, 2025–May 24, 2026. Experience the electricity when dance, art, and history collide!
While widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to visual art, Rauschenberg also played a significant role in the performing arts—both as a performer and as a designer for choreographers over several decades. Among the many dance artists he collaborated with, his most frequent and notable partnerships were with Cunningham and Brown.
“I always tell people that dance is the most fragile art form because it’s dependent on everything about you … You know, everything shows—your body in a specific time and place, whatever it’s thinking, whatever it’s feeling. It’s all right there. I’m definitely envious.”—Robert Rauschenberg
Top image: Trisha Brown Dance Company. Photo © Mark Hanauer.
Articles & More
“Seeing Trisha’s company dance was love at first sight … I admired her physical imagination, the feeling that the body can go anywhere. There was always curiosity, exploration, and subtlety.”—Dance Magazine
"When Robert Rauschenberg Found a Home in Dance: A Trisha Brown company tour recalls a time when Rauschenberg, one of the country’s most influential artists, was changing and being changed by American dance."—The New York Times
Set and Reset: (1983) multicam. Performance: Tate Modern, London, UK, 2017.
Travelogue (1977) Excerpt from The South Bank Show television series, 1980
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- Performance Begins: 7:30 pm
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Acknowledgments
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
