Trish Oesterling, Carolyn Lucas, David Thomson, Gregory Lara in Set and Reset (1983). Photo © Mark Hanauer 1993. Courtesy Trisha Brown Dance Company
Display open daily 10.00 – 18.00, performances various
Admission free during public opening hours, tickets required for performances
For public information call +44(0)20 7887 8888, visit tate.org.uk or follow @Tate #SetandReset
Set and Reset by Trisha Brown with Candoco Dance Company and Rambert is presented by Tate in collaboration with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. Supported by Tate Americas Foundation and the Performance Activation Fund.
On 24 January 2022, Tate Modern will open a major free installation in the Tanks reconceiving Trisha Brown’s ground-breaking postmodern dance Set and Reset 1983. In March, the installation will be activated with ticketed performances by the internationally renowned London-based dance companies Candoco Dance Company and Rambert. It will be presented in collaboration with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, a new performance festival taking place across London. Tickets will go on presale to Tate Members on 19 January and general sale will open on 21 January.
Trisha Brown (1936–2017) was one of the most influential dancers and choreographers of her generation. Celebrated for her artistic experimentalism and collaboration with other artists, musicians and designers in 1960s New York, Brown pioneered a unique process of ‘memorised improvisation’. Set and Reset marked an important shift in Brown’s practice where her fluid yet idiosyncratic dance style was developed into a multi-layered choreographic structure. Comprising choreography by Trisha Brown, soundtrack by Laurie Anderson, stage-set and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg and lighting by Beverly Emmons, Set and Reset first premiered in 1983 and marked a pivotal moment in dance and art history. This free display at Tate Modern will feature elements from the staging, as well as documentation of the performance, and rarely seen videotapes that show Brown building and rehearsing the choreography with her dancers. The stage-set, costumes, soundtrack and lighting, devised by Brown and her collaborators Laurie Anderson, Beverly Emmons and Robert Rauschenberg, will join Tate’s collection as an installation. Through the generosity of the Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Tate Americas Foundation, this acquisition opens up new possibilities for how museums can collect and represent dance as it intersects with visual art.
From 12–14 March 2022, London-based dance company Rambert will perform Set and Reset within the installation at Tate Modern, marking the first time that dancers outside of the Trisha Brown Dance Company have been allowed to perform the 1983 iteration of the work. Alongside the original score, lighting, sets and costumes, Rambert will showcase the fluid and unpredictable style of the original choreography. The following week, from 19–21 March 2022, Candoco Dance Company will perform Set and Reset/Reset, a radical reconstruction of Brown’s original choreography fused with the dancers’ own impulses and instincts. Candoco is one of the world’s leading contemporary dance companies that seeks to expand and challenge the perceptions of what dance can be. Through its company of disabled and non-disabled dancers Candoco continually pushes the boundaries of dance, creating distinctive performances and far-reaching learning experiences. A seminal work in its repertoire, Set and Reset/Reset has been performed by the company to audiences across the world for over ten years.
In collaboration with Trisha Brown Dance Company, Tate will also present Set and Reset/Unset, a series of informal performances that will provide a rare insight into the core principles and processes that Brown used to create her choreography. Taking place within the installation across multiple dates between March and August 2022, these free events will build upon Trisha Brown’s own history of combining spoken-word with movement and delivering lectures about her process while her dancers performed on stage.
The display and performances of Set and Reset form part of Tate’s wider commitment to exhibiting, collecting and researching live art and performance. In May 2022, Tate Modern will stage Lee Mingwei’s performance Our Labyrinth 2015– ongoing, in which single dancers, dressed in floor-length sarongs and wearing ankle bells, take it in turns to sweep a mound of rice in labyrinthine patterns on the floor. The work, which is in the Tate collection, will be presented in the Turbine Hall.
Set and Reset by Trisha Brown is curated by Catherine Wood, Senior Curator of International Art (Performance), Tate Modern with Fiontán Moran and Tamsin Hong, Assistant Curators, Tate Modern.