Free Lab Radio Podcast - Laurie Anderson and Nils Frahm

In the above podcast, we listen to the music of Nils Frahm and Laurie Anderson to mark the Sadler's Wells re-creation of Set and Reset/Reset, 1983 by the Candoco Dance Company. Candoco dance who include fully-abled and different bodied dancers, restage this landmark contemporary piece called Set and Reset by abstract, improvising choreographer Trisha Brown. This ground-breaking production is performed to a contagious score by renowned multi-media artist Laurie Anderson. Long Time no See originally performed with Richard Landry. Set, costumes and part of the lighting were also by artist Robert Rauschenberg.

This is accompanied by a series of dances set to existing tracks by German producer Nils Frahm.

The Set and Reset/Reset project examines the shifting nature of choreography in relation to underlying structures that anchor a dance to itself. The process of re-construction (as opposed to replication) is a negotiation between freedom and limit – an exploration of possibility as the dancers create a new version of Trisha Brown’s landmark choreography.

Abigail Yager danced with Trisha Brown and her company 1995–2002, while she was also Trisha Brown’s musical assistant. As a reconstructor of Brown’s choreography, Yager has worked with Candoco (London, England), Lyon Opera Ballet (Lyon, France), at La Monnaie National Opera of Belgium (Brussels, Belgium), Le Festival International d’Art Lyrique (Aix-en-Provence, France).

Yager taught the Candoco Dance Company dancers exact sequences from the original choreography and later guided them in an extensive improvisation process whereby they used the same set of instructions that Brown gave to her Company in 1983: keep it simple, act on instinct, stay on the edge, work with visibility and invisibility, and get in line. Set and Reset/Reset is a combination of the 2011 and the current company’s choreography.