Perform! Trisha Brown: Walking on the Wall

›Walking on the Wall‹ is one of the best-known and most influential works by American choreographer and conceptual artist Trisha Brown. Premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1971, it is considered one of Brown’s most significant works. In a simple yet radical gesture, Brown had an ensemble of seven dancers walk along the museum wall using ropes and harnesses, challenging the apparent laws of nature governing the performing arts. While the virtuosic defiance of vertical gravity often represents a visual climax in classical ballet, Brown changed the rules by rotating the forces of gravity, raising questions about the conventions governing movement and the point at which movement becomes dance or performance. At the Neue Nationalgalerie, ›Walking on the Wall‹ takes on new layers of meaning in dialogue with Mies van der Rohe’s glass façade.