This essay gives an overview of recurring themes and concerns in Trisha Brown's work through close readings of three dance pieces from three very different periods in her career: Trillium (1962), from the early stages of Judson Dance Theatre; Roof Piece (1973), when Brown was working in close proximity with visual artists in SoHo; and Newark (1987), from the period when the Trisha Brown Company had begun performing in major international theaters and arts festivals. Throughout the successive phases or cycles of her choreographic career, Brown has continually pushed the boundaries of her work as if never satisfied but always restlessly needing to move on. Nevertheless, looking back from the first decade of the twenty-first century, two artistic concerns emerge that have remained in constant, productive tension throughout Brown's long career as a dancer and choreographer. On the one hand, she has searched for new ways of moving by working with improvisation and by investigating through body images the neuro-skeleto-muscular sources of movement. But the ways in which she has set innovative new movement nevertheless exemplify a radical, often conceptual approach to choreographic structure. Her work thus forecloses safe, known, predictable aesthetic experiences and pushes the spectator to find and appreciate new, previously unknown qualities.

In Romanticism and Post-Modernism, Edward Larrissy states, “It has long been recognized that Romanticism is a dubious essence” (1999, 2). Observing that the current tendency is to acknowledge a plurality of “Romanticisms,” he cites Arthur O. Lovejoy's article, “On the discrimination of Romanticisms,” originally published in 1924, in which Lovejoy argued that the term had taken on such a multiplicity of meanings that “we should learn to use the word ‘Romanticism’ in the plural” (1948, 235). Acknowledging multiple schools of Romanticism constitutes more than a “post-modern piece of de-essentialising,” according to Larrissy; it recognizes that the literary and artistic creations of the Romantic era were too varied to submit to “a unified Romantic discourse” (1999, 2). Lovejoy's thesis, so widely accepted in literary circles, holds promise for dance scholars working with repertory from the Romantic era that lies outside the mainstream of “dance history” as traditionally viewed from the perspective of the Paris Opéra. Embracing the possibility of multiple forms of “Romanticism” in the nineteenth-century ballet allows us to attach meaning to the balletic repertory of that era as it varied according to national setting and individual choreographer.

Few Britons could resist the powerful rhetoric of Winston Churchill, whose words to the House of Commons in June 1940 (Churchill 1989) called upon all men, women, and children to do their utmost to serve the war effort. During the worst of the bombings, from 1940 to 1941, in what came to be known as “the blitz,” London and its populace were transformed. J. B. Priestly noted that “for once, [we] felt free, companionable, even—except while waiting for the explosions—lighthearted.” Fear, anxiety, the sense of struggle, or so the story goes, pulled Londoners together and united them in a sense of camaraderie that broke down centuries-old class barriers (Ziegler 1995, 165–166).

Among the commonly accepted myths of the British participation in the Second World War was this one—perpetuated by British authorities and some later historians—that all classes and all people were united in common cause against the enemy. While true on some levels, the picture of an island nation joined in communal sacrifice during the “People's War” masks the underlying societal anxieties that muffled differences of opinion and threatened those who did not adopt accepted notions of patriotism. Vera Brittain, writing at a key point during the world conflict, noted that the Nazi invasions of Europe “produced a rising clamour against unpopular minorities throughout England,” and that “both government and people are temporarily seized by a panic of suspicion” (Brittain 1941, 33). In his examination of the twentieth-century manifestations of British nationalism, Patrick Wright, for one, noted that exclusionary impulses, emerging under the threat of foreign invasion, were linked to subtle but prevalent patterns of anti-Semitism prior to and during the war years (Wright 1985).

Dancer and choreographer José Limón was an artist of epic proportions, both in terms of the scope of his creative energy and the depth of his passionate humanism. Many of his dances speak to his search for the nobility in the human spirit, while others explore darker themes of betrayal, conflict, and despair. Whatever the subject or theme, Limón's dances reveal a consummate craftsman, a devout formalist who sought to reconcile, through his dances, the drama of emotion with the exigencies of choreographic composition and design. As a choreographer, Limón was often most eloquent in creating compact dance-dramas with archetypal, mythic, or literary characters: The Moor's Pavane, The Exiles, The Emperor Jones, and La Malinche.

Limón belongs to the second generation of American modern dancers; in his memoirs, the choreographer metaphorically casts Isadora Duncan and Harald Kreutzberg as his “parents,” Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman as his “foster parents,” and Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn as his “grandparents.” His true origins, while more prosaic, were central to his life as a creative artist. Limón was born in the city of Culiacán, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. His father, Florencio Limón, was a musician, “a pedagogue, conductor and director of the State Academy of Music” (Garafola 1999, 1). His mother, Francisca, came from a good bourgeois family.

A tall dark-haired man sits at a black, desklike, rolling cart in the center of a large empty room. Paint chips off the white walls, and dead autumn leaves cover the floor. The man is clean shaven and wears a black overcoat and black pants, but no shoes. Without speaking, he plays a tape recording of the overture to Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Herzog Blaubart's Burg). As the music begins, he rises and stands over a small dark-haired woman in a red dress, who lies on her back among the leaves, her arms stretched upward as if simultaneously reaching and waiting for something. The man hurls himself on top of her, and she drags his heavy body across the floor, her effort clearing a path through the leaves. As the overture becomes louder, the man rises and stops the tape player, rewinds it, and begins again, returning to his curled position on top of the woman's body. She drags him toward the chair, and as the music reaches the opening line, the man's efforts to stop, rewind, and fall onto her become more frantic. Suddenly he stands, lifting the tiny woman onto her feet and embraces her. Her hand creeps from under his arms and up his torso, inquisitively searching the surface of his chest, neck, and finally his face.

These two comments highlight contrasting approaches to aging for Western theatrical dancers. The first, a quote from movement practitioner Elizabeth Cameron-Dalman, reflects the expectation in Western cultures that professional dancers fortunate enough to have escaped major injury will not stay in their careers beyond their early to middle thirties. Consequently, despite some notable exceptions, there are few mature dancers regularly performing in classical and contemporary dance companies throughout these cultures. This expectation is based on a tacit, naturalized belief that beyond this age dancers' bodies become increasingly unable to cope with the physical demands of performing and that therefore they must retire. Furthermore, this is assumed to be a universal effect, rather than one that is relative to the individual dancer's physical capacities. By contrast, the second comment suggests that dancers can negotiate cultural constraints and continue their dance practice and performance in midlife and beyond.

While some social pressures that influence retirement from dancing might have a direct (although not necessarily causal) relationship with chronological age, there are many reasons why dancers might retire from performing in their perceived prime. Comments from the interviews in my study suggest that these reasons can include financial and job instability, difficulty competing with younger dancers for scarce contracts, and increasing problems in maintaining peak physical condition as dancers age (Leach 1997, 47–49). These are complex issues and at present not clearly understood, but they suggest that age as a stand-alone category or as a means of defining a cohort has little meaning and limited utility in accounting for the cessation of dancing.