Set and Reset (1983)
Music: Laurie Anderson, Long Time No See
Visual Design and Costume: Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting: Beverly Emmons with Robert Rauschenberg
Original Cast: Trisha Brown, Irene Hultman, Eva Karczag, Diane Madden, Stephen Petronio, Vicky Shick, Randy Warshaw
New York Premiere: Fall 1983, BAM, Opera House, Next Wave Festival
Word Premiere: October 20, 1983, Festivals of Montpellier and d’Avignon, La Chartreuse, France
Set and Reset is the Company’s signature work and confirmed Trisha Brown as a leader of abstract choreography.
Set=scenography, Re-set=rescenography. I was asked, at the time, to title the dance before it was choreographed. I was considering my earlier anti-gravitational dances, such as Walking on the Wall as the set, my background as the background. Robert Rauschenberg entered the project soon after. His initial idea for a set, uncannily, a living set.
Bob uses the expression “visual presentation” for his work on my stage. The moving images of the slides and films have a random relationship to the specific events of the dance, however, simultaneity becomes interaction. It’s all one thing in the end.
Trisha Brown
Collaborator Bios
Laurie Anderson (Composer) is one of America’s most renowned – and daring- creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music. Her recording career, launched by O Superman in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave and Life on a String (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her touring solo performance The End of the Moon. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high definition film, Hidden Inside Mountains, created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. She recently completed a two-year worldwide tour of her latest performance piece, Homeland, which will be released on Nonesuch Records this year.
Beverly Emmons (Lighting Designer) has designed for Broadway, Off Broadway and Regional Theater, Dance and Opera both in the USA and abroad. Her Broadway credits include Annie Get Your Gun, Jekyll & Hyde, The Heiress, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Stephen Sondheim’s Passion, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, High Rollers, Stepping Out, The Elephant Man, A Day In Hollywood A Night in the Ukraine, The Dresser, Piaf and Doonesbury. Her lighting of Amadeus won a Tony award. Off Broadway she lit Vagina Monologues and has designed many productions with Joseph Chaikin and Meredith Monk. For Robert Wilson, she has designed lighting for productions spanning 13 years, most notably in America, Einstein on the Beach and the Civil Wars Pt V. Ms Emmons’ designs for dance have included works for Trisha Brown, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. She has been awarded seven Tony nominations, the 1976 Lumen award, 1984 and 1986 Bessies, and a 1980 Obie for Distinguished Lighting, and several Maharam/American Theater Wing Design Awards.
Robert Rauschenberg (Visual Artist and Designer) was born in Port Arthur, TX, and began his formal art education at Black Mountain College, following his discharge from the United States Navy in 1945. In 1949, he moved to New York and in 1951 received his first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery. Mr. Rauschenberg’s first one-artist exhibition was held in 1963 at the Jewish Museum in New York. He received the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale the following year. He has worked in the performing arts since the 1960′s as a set, costume, and lighting designer for various dance companies. A mid-career retrospective was mounted in 1976 at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, when Mr. Rauschenberg was selected to honor the American Bicentennial. Between 1984-1991, he was actively engaged in Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), a tangible expression of his belief in the power of art to bring about social change on an international level, and the culmination of his long-term commitment to human rights. A major retrospective exhibition celebrating his work was offered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1997. Throughout his life Mr. Rauschenberg approached his art with a spirit of invention and with a quest for new materials, technologies, and ideas.