Brown’s last work, I’m going to toss my arms – if you catch them they’re yours (2011), is a collaboration with visual artist Burt Barr, whose striking set is dominated by industrial fans. The original music is by Alvin Curran.
The choreographer Trisha Brown has made dances worth arguing about for more than 50 years, and for at least 30 years her dances have been loved across the world. Many of today’s best-known choreographers — including David Gordon, Mark Morris and Stephen Petronio — have cited her influence, whether for the poetic fluidity of her movement or for the steely, analytical methods of her choreographic structures. A pioneer of the pure-dance experimentalists of the 1960s and ’70s, she challenged and changed the way we define dance performance. – Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
“I’m going to toss my arms – if you catch them they’re yours”… leaves us with the impression that Trisha Brown has found the perfect balance between structural rigor and a total absence of codification. – Agnès Izrine, Dancer
I’m going to toss my arms — if you catch them they’re yours premiered in October 2011 at Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris with sold-out performances for a two-week run. It was met with enthusiastic critical praise in both Paris and Rome and for its New York City premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 2013. The piece features original music by Rome-based composer Alvin Curran (who created music for For M.G.: The Movie in 1991). The proscenium work features industrial fans in a set designed by Brown’s longtime partner, video artist Burt Barr, Tyvek costumes by Kaye Voyce and lights by John Torres. In keeping with Brown’s tradition of site specificity, this performance is recontextualized on Pier 15 peering into East River Waterfront.
I’m going to toss my arms- if you catch them, they’re yours was co-commissioned by Théâtre National de Chaillot and Trisha Brown Dance Company. This work was also made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; The Harkness Foundation for Dance and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.