The high priestess of postmodern dance Trisha Brown experimented with the human body in relation to architecture and geometry, using the city itself as a medium. Mangolte, in addition to documenting Brown’s iconic choreography on the rooftops of Soho in 1973, also documented its re-staging in a more limited space this time in 2011. While in the first version, the spectators looked towards the distant rooftops, in this one they were required to move about the space in order to see each dancer. A succession of nine dancers relay the improvisation of the first dancer to the last dancer for 15 minutes and then the order of the relay starts from the ninth dancer back to the first one.
Babette Mangolte (1941) is a French-American director, cinematographer, photographer and artist who has lived in New York since 1970. She has worked as a cinematographer with Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer and has made important experimental films on the very act of looking about the American landscape, about contemporary dance and the art of performance. She is considered one of the most important artists of the American avant-garde and currently teaches at the University of San Diego in California.
Photos: Roof piece on the High Line, Lauren © 2012 Babette Mangolte, all rights of reproduction reserved
