The Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) has joined forces with the Merce Cunningham Trust to create “Dancing With Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage” in celebration of American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s centennial year. This year-long tour will feature Set Reset choreographed in 1983 by Trisha Brown and Travelogue created in 1977 by Merce Cunningham. The set and costumes for both works were designed by Rauschenberg and each will be performed by members of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. The Dancing With Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage tour began on June 12 and 13, 2025 at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, appearing in Los Angeles at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts May 6 -8, 2026. Tickets are on sale now.
Robert Rauschenberg (1997) – Photographer Ed Chappell, Photograph Collection – Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York
Rauschenberg’s collaborative relationship with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company lasted from 1952 through the end of the MCDC’s World Tour in 1964. The two artists reunited in 1977 for Cunningham’s Travelogue, in 2000 for Interscape and in 2007 for the last time for XOVER. Brown collaborated with Rauschenberg during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
LA Dance Chronicle writer Jeff Slayton met on Zoom with TBDC’s Executive Director Kirstin Kapustik, Associate Director of Licensing for the MC Trust, Andrea Weber, and TBDC dancer Savannah Gaillard to learn more.
It was the former Director of the Cunningham Trust, Ken Tabachnick, who suggested this project to former TBDC Artist Director Carolyn Lucas. Ken Tabachnick had worked as Production Manager with the Trisha Brown company during the development of “Set Reset” and it was he who chose “Travelogue” to be part of “Dancing With Bob.”
Lucas pitched the idea to Jamie Scott, the Programing Director for TBDC, who thought that the company should only perform Set Reset. Kapustik, however, believed that the TBDC should perform Cunningham’s Travelogue because they were still a fully functioning dance company. She and Tabachnick started right away working on raising the funding, planning the project and promoting it to presenters across the country. “It’s pretty amazing to see it come to fruition almost two years later,” Kapustik said. Their hard work paid off and currently there is a seven city with hope that the tour will be extended beyond LA to include a European tour.
I asked if this project would go on past Rauschenberg’s centennial year.
Merce Cunningham – Photo and copyright by Annie Leibovitz (1997) Courtesy of the Merce Cunninhgam Trust and Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library
“I don’t think we can answer that right now,” Kapustik said. “This is a program full of powerhouses and a full evening of dance.” Weber agreed and added that special events are being planned such as a pre-dialogue at Ohio State University and at Iowa State students are performing Trisha Brown’s “Foray, Forêt” choreographed in 1990.
Because the Trisha Brown movement style is so very different than that of Merce Cunningham’s, I asked TBDC dancer Savannah Gaillard, with her training, how it is to go from one dance to the very different style of the other?
Merce Cunningham Dance Company in “Travelogue”, Choreography: Merce Cunningham – Photo: Charles Atlas.
“Today was the first day we touched Cunningham’s ”Travelogue” and Trisha’s ”Set Reset”, “Gaillard stated. “There did feel like there had to be a full body scan just to find that weight related, bone related movement again, because naturally without going back to the ways in which Trisha and her dancers worked, using the Alexander Technique, it is easy to just muscle through certain kinds of movements without finding the natural momentum of things.” Even though they are very different techniques, each complimented the other really nicely. “The clarity and the sharpness you have to have in Cunningham, that you will put in Trisha’s work sometimes. Surprisingly, an enjoyable kind of switch.”
“And mentally in the brain, you’re looking at two very different things,” Gaillard continued. “I think that Cunningham is much more literal and in Trisha’s work there’s a symbiotic, telepathic almost and physical also communication that’s happening.”
Trisha Brown Dance Company in “Travelogue” (1979), Choreography: Merce Cunningham – Dancers: Savannah Gaillard, Spencer Weidie, Catherine Kirk, Burr Johnson, Patrick Needham, Jennifer Payán, Claude CJ Johnson. Ashley Merker – Photo: Ben McKeown, courtesy of the American Dance Festival.
“This company specifically is quite informed about Merce’s work. All have taken class and have had some sort of connection to it, whether it’s been their own delving into it or at having studied it in school. There’s this way of being in Trisha’s work where you can see these little flecks of Cunningham come out of fingertips, bodies and toes in these moments of this technique.” Weber said.
Weber said that the Cunningham Trust already had an archival process with Travelogue so it seemed relevant to restage Travelogue and because it marked Rauschenberg’s reuniting with Cunningham after the two artists had parted ways in 1964. Travelogue had not be seen since 1979 when after a long hiatus from the company, Rauschenberg agreed to collaborate with Cunningham.
Trisha Brown – Photo by Marc Ginot.
The Walker Arts Museum in Minneapolis, MN has the original sets and costumes for Travelogue, so the TBDC collaborated with the Cunningham Trust to have them reconstructed. Weber feels that the sets and costumes for this work are extraordinary and was thrilled with the material that was chosen to make the sails that are part of Rauschenberg’s design. “They’re just gorgeous,” she gushed. “They also have the same color palette as the originals. I’m very excited!”
Kapustik described the set for Set Reset as playing with the idea of invisibility and visibility.”
“Yes, invisibility and visibility, playing the edge,” Gaillard began. “There are these panels of fabric that are see-through. The prints include railroad tracks, barbed wire; very beautiful prints of Rauschenberg’s photographs.”
Trisha Brown Dance Company – “Set and Reset” (1983), Choreography: Trisha Brown – Dancers: Catherine Kirk, Ashley Merker, Jennifer Payán, Spencer Weidie – Photo: Ben McKeown, courtesy of the American Dance Festival.
Trisha Brown and her company created sequences of movement that were called walls and there were four walls that the dancers go through. “In each wall the dancers improvise and then kind of reset.”
There is also a background with a sculpture construction that includes an overlay of fabric where photos are projected onto. “Those are all of news articles from the time period when all this was happening,” Kapustik added.
My final question was if there was anything that we had not discussed that they felt our readers should know.
Trisha Brown Dance Company – “Set and Reset” (1983), Choreography: Trisha Brown – Dancers: Patrick Needham, Catherine Kirk – Photo: Ben McKeown, courtesy of the American Dance Festival.
“Yes, Ken envisioned this program, and he brought it to us, and we’re honoring Robert Rauschenberg,” Kapustik said. “But I think, for me, this is really about collaboration. And you have these two incredible choreographers, and they both collaborated so differently with Robert Rauschenberg to create these really phenomenal works of art on stage, and just to really elevate contemporary dance to the level of visual art, and what this means for contemporary dance, too.
“We came back from a beautiful residency, or beautiful shows at Mass MoCA over the weekend, and Savannah was performing in front of the Sol LeWitt and it just was so phenomenal and just made so much sense.
“Dance does not get the recognition that it deserves, but for us, this show is really about how important this work is and just elevating these artists next to the great visual artists of the 20th century. And also, of course, honoring Rauschenberg and what he did for this work, and how much performance was a part of his regular practice.”
Trisha Brown Dance Company – “Set and Reset” (1983), Choreography: Trisha Brown – Dancers: Jennifer Payán, Patrick Needham, Spencer Weidie, Catherine Kirk – Photo: Ben McKeown, courtesy of the American Dance Festival.
Weber jumped in to add, “I think it’s a beautiful testament to the versatility of your dancers as well. I just have to say it’s really difficult to move one person’s choreography forward in the world, and the mission that you have to bring new work in and to do it’s just so incredible. So, for us, it’s about moving forward.”
Most of the current TBDC members are relatively new so they are still learning how to execute Brown’s work. “Then to jump into something where we haven’t collectively built a Cunningham Technique together. We haven’t collectively had these moments to you know, these moments to learn such a specific, detailed and physical technique,” Gillard continued. “To jump in, I feel everyone is very fearless and very trusting too.”
“Dancing With Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage” appears at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Thursday – Saturday, May 6-8, 2026 with two performances on Saturday. This is a historical event, so try not to miss it.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts website.
To learn more about the Trisha Brown Dance Company, please visit their website.
For more information on the Merce Cunningham Trust, please visit their website.
Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Trisha Brown Dance Company in Travelogue (1979), Choreography by Merce Cunningham – Dancers Savannah Gaillard, Spencer Weidie, Catherine Kirk, Burr Johnson, Patrick Needham, , Jennifer Payán, Claude CJ Johnson – Photo by Ben McKeown, courtesy of the American Dance Festival.