Not really intended to read like a Jeopardy! column, the images above mark the opening credits of Trisha Brown's Accumulation With Talking Plus Watermotor, a 1979 dance captured in an extraordinary 1986 short directed by Jonathan Demme for Southern California PBS(whaa?).
Thankfully!Annoyingly! you can't find it online. So you oughta rent/buy the inspiring DVD, Trisha Brown: Early Works 1966-1979. Get prioritized, yo.
In Demme's film, she improvises(?) her way around the studio for ten minutes, tracing the transformation of the piece (which is really three conflated works) through epic body work and fragmented narration.
As she toggles back and forth between telling two different stories (sometimes in midair), we watch her physically inhabit two different histories. She remembers, then forgets, then remembers what she's talking/moving about. She's no longer a character in her life and work, she is her life and work.
Does me well to be reminded that we're always improvising, teetering between remembering and forgetting as we move through experience and understanding. The details and the telling are -- and will always be -- variable. A person's relationship to gravity!
When she's talking, she can't keep up with her dancing. When she's dancing, she can't keep up with her talking. But she's doing both.
And, amazingly, she's never out of breath.
Roof and Fire Piece, 1973 (also on DVD)
New: Hero-Styles
And Kicking: http://www.trishabrowncompany.org/
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