Photo : © Ben McKeown
Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage by Trisha Brown Dance Company
Forget standard ballet conventions and step into a world where dance transforms into an experimental playground of meticulous movement and quirky humor. Experience firsthand how choreography reaches new heights when it collides with the bold, boundary-pushing world of visual art.
La Villette (Paris 19th)
About
The Trisha Brown Dance Company takes over La Villette from April 8 to 16, 2027, to celebrate the work of artist Robert Rauschenberg. This dance program features two landmark pieces where choreography interacts with visual art to create a unique experimental environment. The show includes Trisha Brown’s Set & Reset and Merce Cunningham’s Travelogue, both highlighting the audacity of post-modern dance. Suitable for audiences aged 10 and older, the performance lasts 1 hour and 15 minutes, including an intermission. Tickets are available at prices ranging from 17 to 45 euros, with showtimes varying throughout the week.
Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage brings together two works where dance meets the imagination of visual artist Robert Rauschenberg and emerges tenfold. With Set & Reset (1983), Trisha Brown pushes her choreography to a rare degree of freedom: a movement that slides, unfolds, and diverts, as if the bodies were improvising within an invisible structure. The dancers brush against each other, get lost, find each other, carried by a continuous circulation that makes landmarks waver and gives flesh to a perpetual movement of infinite beauty. This piece completes the cycle she called "Unstable Molecular Structures." The transparencies, moving images, and costumes designed by Rauschenberg, as well as the music by Laurie Anderson, amplify this sensation of permanent momentum, emblematic of a postmodern dance that makes freedom a compositional method.
Conversely, Travelogue (1977) emerges as a wildly offbeat object in the work of Merce Cunningham: a piece crossed by the spirit of vaudeville and musical comedy, where improbable props, absurd situations, and surreal humor disrupt the rigor of his choreography. John Cage composes a fragmented soundscape, while Rauschenberg populates the stage with objects and colors that tip the dance towards burlesque theater.
United to celebrate the centenary of "Bob" Rauschenberg, these two pieces reveal a stage that has become a laboratory, where dance is invented in contact with visual arts and music, where audacity remains the engine of everything, and the stage transforms into a joyfully experimental playground.
Agnès Izrine
Duration: 1h15 with intermission
Category:
- Dance
Our take on this event
Dancing with Bob marks the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg at La Villette, showcasing his profound influence on the dance world through his collaborations with choreographers Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham. The production brings together two distinct visions: Set & Reset, which explores fluid, perpetual motion within a structure of transparency and costumes designed by Rauschenberg, and Travelogue, a 1977 piece that blends surrealism and vaudeville-inspired humor with an unconventional soundscape by John Cage.
The event runs from April 8 to 16, 2027. Performance times are set for 20:00 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; 19:00 on Thursdays; 18:00 on Saturdays; and 16:00 on Sundays. The total duration of the performance is 1 hour and 15 minutes, including an intermission. Tickets are priced between 17 and 45 euros. The performance is recommended for ages 10 and up.
