A person attached to a rope walks vertically down a tall, glass building. Her stride seems relaxed and determined.
© Sisso
A person attached to a rope walks vertically down a tall, glass building. Her stride seems relaxed and determined.
© Sisso
International Summer Festival 2024
Performance / Visual Arts

Trisha Brown

Man Walking Down the Side of a Building

Past dates

This site-specific performance is one of the most minimalist yet spectacular works by Trisha Brown (1936–2017), who made dance and art history with her drawings and over 100 choreographies. In 1970, Brown had a dancer equipped with mountaineering gear walk vertically down a building in Manhattan to draw attention to the simple and natural act of walking by shifting it into an unnatural scenario. The performance is characteristic of Brown’s work within New York’s Judson Dance Theater, where she, alongside choreographers like Lucinda Childs, invented postmodern dance by creating choreographies based on everyday movements and individual gestures. In Hamburg, MAN WALKING DOWN THE SIDE OF A BUILDING will now be shown three times over two days on the exterior facade of Galerie der Gegenwart. This performance is realized through the Californian vertical dance company BANDALOOP, who is performing the work globally as artist-in-residence performer of the Trisha Brown Dance Company.


Choreography Trisha Brown Visual Design Trisha Brown, Nonas, Richard, Jared Bark Costume Everyday Clothing Performer Original Cast Joseph Schlichter NYC Premiere In and around 80 Wooster Street, New York City, April 18, 1970 Performance Hamburg Bandaloop (Head Rigger: Derrick Lindsay, Performer: Suzanne Gallo) In cooperation with the Hamburger Kunsthalle and The Trisha Brown Dance Company. BANDALOOP is funded by the City of Oakland, the National Endowment for the Arts and a number of individual donors from around the world.