When Robert Rauschenberg Found a Home in Dance How the artist shaped and was shaped by American Dance
By Brian Seibert
It’s not common for the set of a dance to have its own title. But “Tantric Geography,” the set for Merce Cunningham’s 1977 “Travelogue,” isn’t ordinary.
For one thing, it moves. It’s an odd sort of trolley with a row of wooden chairs for seats. These are fixed between upturned bicycle wheels that don’t touch the ground. The dancers ride it as it rolls on hidden wheels, pulled by a rope.
What’s most significant about this set, though, is that it was designed by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008).
“Travelogue” was a reunion, the resumption of a collaboration with Cunningham and his company that had been intensely close and extraordinarily creative in the 1950s and ’60s. Two years later, in 1979, Rauschenberg started designing for a younger friend, the choreographer Trisha Brown, contributing to another string of masterpieces.
These two artistic relationships — Rauschenberg and Cunningham (1919-2009), Rauschenberg and Brown (1936-2017) — are the focus of “Dancing With Bob,” a program that the Trisha Brown Dance Company is taking on a national tour in honor of Rauschenberg’s centennial.
