Jeff Friedman: Drawing=Choreography=Drawing

Trisha Brown is a renowned post-modern dancer and choreographer with a long and distinguished national and international career. Brown is well-known for her nuanced collaborations with many visual artists, including Robert Rauschenberg and many others. Brown has also created visual art in her own right, including two works in the Art=Text=Art exhibition.

Trisha Brown, Drawing for Pyramid, 1975, ink on graph paper, 6 ¾ x 7 ½ inches (17.2 x 19.1 cm). © Trisha Brown / Photo: Ellen McDermott
Trisha Brown, Drawing for Pyramid, 1975, ink on graph paper, 6 ¾ x 7 ½ inches (17.2 x 19.1 cm). © Trisha Brown / Photo: Ellen McDermott
This online conversation gives us an opportunity to discuss the role of visual arts and choreography, as they interact artistically on-stage, as visual arts documents choreography as an archive, and as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry.

Jeff Friedman is Associate Professor of Dance Studies, Mason Gross School of the Arts, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his PhD in Dance History and Theory at the University of California-Riverside, where he was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow. As a professional dancer and choreographer, Jeff has toured nationally and internationally with the Oberlin Dance Collective and LOCUS Solo Dance. His solo work Muscle Memory has been seen in throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Poland and Germany. Friedman was a Senior Research and Teaching Fulbright Fellow in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2010. His publications are available in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and New Zealand. He was also a visiting Senior Lecturer in the Dance Studies Programme at Auckland University, New Zealand.