Tara Lorenzen, repertory Trisha Brown

Tara Lorenzen is originally from the hills of West Virginia. Upon graduation from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, she became a member of the Repertory Understudy Group under Merce Cunningham where she created an original role in EyeSpace as well as reconstructing earlier works such as Rune and Summerspace. She went on to work with Stephen Petronio Dance Company, Kimberly Bartosik, Christine Elmo, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Anna Sperber, Beth Gill and Maria Hassabi. Since 2011, Tara Lorenzen performs and teaches master classes for the Trisha Brown Dance Company all over the world. She recently assisted the reconstruction of Trisha’s O zlozony/O composite for the Pennsylvania Ballet. Tara Lorenzen has been on faculty at Bard College since 2016 and is the Director of Dance since 2022. She is a certified Cunningham Technique teacher and continues to investigate the potential intersection of John Cage’s works within all artistic disciplines.

Using Trisha Brown’s set of improvisational instructions, we will reconstruct one of her postmodern masterpiece, Set and Reset (1983). Through this process called Set and Reset/Reset, we experiment an example of artist creating a living legacy for their work that allows an iteration of Brown’s choreographic brilliance, in conversation with the impulses and instincts of the dancers exploring her work. The objective is to offer dancers the opportunity to borrow Trisha Brown’s vocabulary and concepts to derive a unique version of the original choreography. Part dance history, composition, improvisation, performance and technique, it is both product and process oriented and encourages a multi-dimensional approach to art making.