ABSTRACT
Trisha Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, where in her youth she studied tap, ballet, acrobatics, and jazz. At Mills College she took courses in dance composition based on Louis Horst’s approach and studied with Horst himself at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. It was there that she witnessed John Cage’s lecture on indeterminacy, which she says tipped the scales toward her engagement in choreography. After getting her degree in modern dance from Mills, Brown studied task-based improvisation, vocalization, and experiential anatomy at Anna Halprin’s studio. At the urging of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, Brown moved to New York City, where she continued to study modern dance and took Robert Dunn’s composition class based on the teachings of John Cage.
