Trisha Brown & the Staging of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo

JULIUS HELD LECTURE HALL, 304 BARNARD HALL

Claudio Monteverdi’s 1607 L’Orfeo was a milestone in the history of opera. In 1998, almost 400 years later, postmodernist choreographer Trisha Brown directed a new production at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels that melded singers and dancers in a vision both formally abstract and intensely moving. In this documentary about her staging of the opera, Diane Madden, the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s associate artistic director, soars across the stage in front of a disc of blazing color, while Stacy Matthew Spence is shown helping the singers move with the dignity and grace he embodies in his own dancing. Department of Dance Co-Chair Lynn Garafola leads them in a conversation, along with Susan Boynton, professor of historical musicology at Columbia University.

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