A Walk Across the Rooftops with Trisha Brown

The title track (and lead track/ track 1) of Blue Nile's sensational debut album, A Walk Across the Rooftops (1983), is a twitchy, bonkers romantic tune that hasn't been on youtube, but needs to be. We hereby fill that gap. The visuals are manipulations of photos (mainly gathered from across the web) of Trisha Brown's choreography, focusing on her stunning, rooftop, quasi- environmental art pieces of the early 1970s. (That's Brown herself at, e.g., 2:45, 3:05, 3:33. The famous rooftop shots are by Babette Mangolte. The famous 'man walking down the side of a building' shot is by Caroline Gooden. The famous 'Trisha rehearsing' shot is by Guy Delahaye.)
Brown's stuff is amazing, and very mathematical at bottom (see some of her algebraic drawing art at 3:01), which we like. She also managed to give 'post-modern' a relatively good name in dance (just as Richard Foreman did in theater in NYC), certainly compared to its well-deserved 'stinking up the joint' reputation in philosophy, poetry, architecture, and the like.
I feel sure that anyone who likes (or once liked) The Blue Nile would like Brown's dance company (in fact, no one interested in the arts or mental expansion more generally should pass up an opportunity to see either Brown's or Merce Cunningham's companies). Probably the converse is true too. At any rate, I hope this vid. will spark the odd interesting cross-pollination.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• The
• Blue
• Nile
• Walk
• Across
• the
• Rooftops
• Trisha
• Brown
• Modern
• Dance
• 1980s
• Glasgow
• NYC
• Babette
• Mangolte

[xn6]

chris martin sent me here

[swanstep]

@xn6 Coldplay's Chris Martin? Good for him if so. Now I think about, the best early Coldplay stuff (Shiver, The Scientist) does sound a bit like Blue Nile...

[cinemasailor]

A favorite track from a favorite album. I really like the way the pacing of the photomontage keeps gently nudging you back to the music, and vice versa.

[swanstep]

@cinemasailor Thanks!

[MrSherco12]

very eclectic video. well done 

[mhss0001]

@swanstep Ah Thank you so much! and yes, it would have been amazing to see.

[nycorbust]

This is amazing. Thanks for posting it.

[swanstep]

@mhss0001 OK! The piece you are thinking of is Spanish Dance (1973). For the first 20 seconds I just pan across the main publicity shot from that piece (google 'trisha brown spanish dance' to learn more and see the shot by itself). TBC did Spanish Dance at the Whitney Museum in NYC last year (2010) a couple of times. Would have been great to see it (sigh).

[mhss0001]

@swanstep I'm sorry, i should have been clearer, i meant the dance piece in the picture. what is the name if the choreographed dance?

[swanstep]

@mhss0001 The audio is just the quasi-ambient beginning of the (1983) Blue Nile track. It appears to involve some found sound/environment/room recording + a few Eno-ish synth noodlings rather than, e.g., sampling of a previous recording or movie s/track.