About Roof Piece
a dance by Trisha Brown and a photograph by Babette Mangolte
For Trisha the choreography was testing how improvised movements
appear at a distance and are transformed by transmission by a succession
of dancers mimicking with variation what they see and how what
has been transmitted at one end is different when received at the
other end. The dance tested the erosion of movement by transmission
as in telegraphy. It also was about revealing the majesty and privacy
of downtown roofs and the sculptural effect of its water towers.
The dance was made of improvised movements influenced by the series Accumulation and Group
Primary Accumulation choreographed by Trisha Brown in 1972
and 1973, and how dancers positioned about a block apart over
a large distance transmitted those movements. The distance was
the numbers of city blocks in New York City from West Broadway
and Houston to White Street and Church at the other end. Altogether
the distance was seven blocks north to south and three blocks
west to east.
The movement was improvised by Trisha Brown facing south and seen
by the dancers closer to her facing North. Trisha was sending the
movement down the line to Carmen Beuchat at the receiving end on
White Street. After 15 minutes Trisha ducked below the ledge of
the roof signaling to all the dancers on their rooftops that it
was time for them to face South to be ready to transmit the movement
originated by Carmen Beuchat on White Street back to Trisha Brown
on the receiving end of the line. The total piece was two times
fifteen minutes or thirty minutes plus duck-time.
I suggested to Trisha that the best way to document the piece
was to film with three 16mm cameras the head and tail end of the
line and an intermediary view of a long shot with the rooftops.
At the time they was no way to synchronize three film projectors
but I felt that three filmed views were the only way to prove the
erosion of the movement by comparison over the thirty minutes of
the performance by placing side by side the head and tail of the
line. The three film rolls were shot on reversal color Kodachrome
film stock and Trisha had dressed all the dancers in red so they
would be highly visible for the audience that had several rooftops
to gather, including the ones where the dancers were situated.
There was no place from where you could see it all. Actually the
dance piece could be seen only in retrospect through recording
and replay. Wherever you were, even from far away, you saw specks
of red here and there. Nowhere could you see it all. We loaded
each camera with 1200 feet load or about 33 minutes of screen time,
so once started the cameras were left to document in static shots
what would happen.
Trisha raised the money to shoot the dance with three cameras
and the three films were only formally assembled as DVD display
synchronized and side-by-side in Art, Lies and Videotapes,
Exposing Performance at Tate Liverpool curated by Adrian George
in 2003.
I shoot one roll of black and white photographs during the 30
minutes dance and the contact sheet printed on 16 by 20 inches
paper, in its 24 frames, reveals the haphazardness of it all. Only
one photograph from the roll was reproduced at first in the New
York Times, then immediately in many other places making the
photograph well known and this image is now considered to be the
embodiment of the New York downtown art scene from the 1970s.
When examining why this singular photograph is so powerful you
notice that the dancer in the foreground is seen from the back
looking at the vista in front of her and echoing in her movement
the line of the roof where she stands. Two large water towers seem
to dominate left and right of the space. The dancer is Silvia Palacios-Whitman
and she is looking south so the photo was taken in the second half
of the dance. You also quickly and at a second glance notice that
other dancers are there on rooftop and have the same diagonally
curved bodyline. When you look very attentively you can count at
least three more dancers that recede in the haze of a July day.
But it is because the photo is in black and white that the effect
is so strong. The dancer’s body is just other speck of gray,
almost like an afterthought. Black and white erases the dancers
and highlights the display of the New York roof architecture seen
as glistening white roofs and massive water tower that dwarf the
bodies.
The dance was set outdoors on rooftops and was performed twice
on June 24 and on July 1, starting at 2 PM. I took the photograph
and organized the shooting of the three cameras shoot on the July
1 performance and it is also then that I took my most famous photograph.For
Trisha,
Babette Mangolte, July 2007
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