Merce Cunningham & Trisha Brown, Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon

The Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon unites two pioneers of American postmodernism: Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. Their oeuvre advocates the mining of limitless possibilities. Far from the classical dance codes, they disconnected the body from the narrative or from the music. Thus Cunningham created his choreography ‘Summerspace’ (1958) independently of Morton Feldman’s music and Robert Rauschenberg’s set. Yet this joint work has a similar effect to a sultry summer day. In ‘Exchange’ (1978) he allowed chance to determine the order of the movements. Trisha Brown established her typical dance style in 1983 with the pioneering ‘Set and Reset’: a continuum of movements, light-footed and fast. ‘Set & Reset/Reset’ is the specially adapted version for this ballet company.