Trisha Brown

The point - or at least one point - of Trisha Brown's dance is that it can't be pinned down. Literally or metaphorically. She has always liked, for instance, to leave the ground. So, along with two programs in Royce Hall on Friday and Sunday that are focal points of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA's Trisha Brown retrospective , some seminal site-specific pieces will be held around the Westside. FULL COVERAGE: 2013 Spring arts preview A man will walk down the side of the Broad Art Center on the UCLA campus at 6 p.m. Friday, re-creating an event that startled New Yorkers 40 years ago in SoHo; roof dance pieces will be presented Saturday afternoon at the Getty Center; and “Floor of the Forest” is an ongoing daily event Thursdays through Sundays at the Hammer Museum.

"Floor of the Forest," a retrospective dance performance celebrating the work of Trisha Brown, will come to life as dancers weave their way through a steel-and-rope sculpture draped in clothing. The dancers move through the apparatus by slipping into and out of the clothes, without touching the ground. The piece was first performed in 1970 by Brown and Carmen Beuchat in New York City's SoHo neighborhood. The Hammer Museum courtyard, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m. Thu. and Fri., and noon, 2 and 4 Sat. and Sun. Free.

In her 10-minute solo "If you couldn't see me," legendary choreographer Trisha Brown dances on the stage of the Veterans Wadsworth Theater on Friday facing upstage but sustaining her free-spirited, torso-twisting, arm-swirling gambits so skillfully that not seeing her face becomes only an incidental matter. Remember Fred Astaire in silhouette? Brown is that distinctive, indeed, inimitable, with her back turned.

For the brief moment that she stood atop the eight-story building at UCLA on Friday evening in the soft light of the setting sun, she looked as though she belonged there. This was, after all, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, and the woman might have been, say, an Antony Gormley artwork. She surely seemed a sculpture as she began to tip over. But once at a 90-degree angle to the ground, she walked, casually and with slow ease, down the side of the building as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. For spectators watching from below, things became confused.

"I always feel sorry for the parts of the stage that aren't being used," Trisha Brown has declared, "sorry for the ceilings and walls. It's perfectly good space. Why doesn't anyone use it?" A dozen years ago when Brown made this plea for spatial affirmative action, she was a choreographer noted for sparse, task - oriented dances.

For the brief moment that she stood atop the eight-story building at UCLA on Friday evening in the soft light of the setting sun, she looked as though she belonged there. This was, after all, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, and the woman might have been, say, an Antony Gormley artwork. She surely seemed a sculpture as she began to tip over. But once at a 90-degree angle to the ground, she walked, casually and with slow ease, down the side of the building as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. For spectators watching from below, things became confused.

Reporting from New York Stephen Petronio and Trisha Brown see each other's New York-based companies perform whenever they can. Friends and like-minded choreographers for more than 25 years, they both make sensual dances, packed with ideas. But when they come to the Los Angeles area soon, they'll be too busy preparing for their performances to take in each other's concerts. Says Petronio in a recent conversation, "I'll never stop being swept up in Trisha's work. " The 11-member Stephen Petronio Company is bringing the choreographer's hit "Underland," performed to songs by Australian rocker Nick Cave, to Riverside and Santa Barbara this week.

When Trisha Brown first danced at UCLA, nearly 11 years ago, it was in an unorthodox space (the ballroom of Ackerman Union) and with an unconventional, back-to-basics program. In "Group Primary Accumulation," she and her four-member company proved that bold, formal, logical movement structures could be as satisfying to watch as the glamorous exhibitionism of ballet or the intense expressivity of modern dance. No longer.

A photographer is asking Trisha Brown to rearrange herself into ever smaller and more complicated knots. In her company's airy Manhattan studio, Brown is doing her best to comply, although the tight poses could not be more unlike the fluid, free-swinging way she dances, and she looks a little puzzled as to what his interest could be in these contorted positions.

On an astonishingly busy weekend of dance, Angelenos had the good fortune Saturday to experience two exceptional site-specific performances: the local debut of Trisha Brown's historic “Roof Piece” at the Getty Center and the premiere of Stephan Koplowitz's “Red Line Time,” a marathon circuitous journey on the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro line. Though sorely overused, the term “experience” is appropriate and deliberate for these pieces. Audiences certainly may choose to watch a site-specific dance with the same mind-set they would if sitting in a comfortable auditorium (minus the cushy chair)

On an astonishingly busy weekend of dance, Angelenos had the good fortune Saturday to experience two exceptional site-specific performances: the local debut of Trisha Brown's historic “Roof Piece” at the Getty Center and the premiere of Stephan Koplowitz's “Red Line Time,” a marathon circuitous journey on the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro line. Though sorely overused, the term “experience” is appropriate and deliberate for these pieces. Audiences certainly may choose to watch a site-specific dance with the same mind-set they would if sitting in a comfortable auditorium (minus the cushy chair)

The Sunset Canyon Amphitheatre, at the northwest corner of the UCLA campus, is not exactly the wilds. The bleachers overlook a recreation center's grassy knoll and a swimming pool in the distance. Still, the amphitheater is hidden away and, thanks to UCLA's parking militia, mildly inaccessible to the public. If that touch of trouble and remove helped make Sunset Canyon an enchanted, although challenging, venue Thursday night for Trisha Brown's "Astral Converted," it also helped remind us just how radically times have changed over the last two decades.

Bebe Miller is a contemporary choreographer of power and pertinence. But in her multimedia retrospective "A History," she attempts to make navel-gazing into a spectator sport, undercutting her most indelible achievements. This ambitious, overproduced 75-minute exercise opened Thursday at the REDCAT in Walt Disney Concert Hall for a four-day run. "At once an archive and an installation as well as a performance piece," in Miller's words, it enlists text, video, music, title slides and an elaborate scenic environment, but the only indispensable contributions come from Miller company dancers Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones.

The point - or at least one point - of Trisha Brown's dance is that it can't be pinned down. Literally or metaphorically. She has always liked, for instance, to leave the ground. So, along with two programs in Royce Hall on Friday and Sunday that are focal points of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA's Trisha Brown retrospective , some seminal site-specific pieces will be held around the Westside. FULL COVERAGE: 2013 Spring arts preview A man will walk down the side of the Broad Art Center on the UCLA campus at 6 p.m. Friday, re-creating an event that startled New Yorkers 40 years ago in SoHo; roof dance pieces will be presented Saturday afternoon at the Getty Center; and “Floor of the Forest” is an ongoing daily event Thursdays through Sundays at the Hammer Museum.

This spring, some postmodern dance heavy hitters come to town, with new works and tantalizing revivals. The weeklong Trisha Brown engagement is especially significant for its selection of historic outdoor works. It's a farewell of sorts - this trailblazer of the Judson Dance Theater movement of 50 years ago announced recently that she will not be creating any new pieces. For ballet lovers, the season's pickings are slimmer, though Ballet BC will show off its new look, instigated by artistic director Emily Molnar, and Los Angeles Ballet will devote two different programs to masterworks by George Balanchine.

Modern-dance choreographer Trisha Brown, who announced her retirement from creating new work last month, will bring her renowned company to Los Angeles for a series of performances at multiple venues, including the Getty Museum and the Hammer Museum, starting in late March. "Trisha Brown Dance Company: The Retrospective Project" is organized by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.  The New York dance company will begin on March 30 with Brown's installation work "Floor of the Forest," with performances several times daily on Thursdays through Sundays in the Hammer Museum courtyard.

DANCE The centerpiece of CalArts' "Winter Dance" presentation is a restaging of Trisha Brown's landmark 1983 work "Set and Reset," here rechristened "Set and Reset/Reset," which features the institution's most esteemed dancers and a score by Laurie Anderson. Also slated for the evening are excerpts from Barak Marshall's "Rooster," Daniel Charon's "Juncture" and a new short piece from Rosanna Gamson, whose "Tov" premiered at the theater last spring. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. 8:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat.

"Floor of the Forest," a retrospective dance performance celebrating the work of Trisha Brown, will come to life as dancers weave their way through a steel-and-rope sculpture draped in clothing. The dancers move through the apparatus by slipping into and out of the clothes, without touching the ground. The piece was first performed in 1970 by Brown and Carmen Beuchat in New York City's SoHo neighborhood. The Hammer Museum courtyard, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m. Thu. and Fri., and noon, 2 and 4 Sat. and Sun. Free.

Trisha Brown Dance Company When and where: 8 p.m. Saturday; Valley Performing Arts Center, Northridge Tickets: $25-$70 http://www.valleyperformingartscenter.org Stephen Petronio Company When and where: 8 p.m. Monday; Campbell Hall, UC Santa Barbara Tickets: $40; artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu When and where: 8 p.m. Wednesday; University Theatre, UC Riverside Tickets: $30;...

Reporting from New York Stephen Petronio and Trisha Brown see each other's New York-based companies perform whenever they can. Friends and like-minded choreographers for more than 25 years, they both make sensual dances, packed with ideas. But when they come to the Los Angeles area soon, they'll be too busy preparing for their performances to take in each other's concerts. Says Petronio in a recent conversation, "I'll never stop being swept up in Trisha's work. " The 11-member Stephen Petronio Company is bringing the choreographer's hit "Underland," performed to songs by Australian rocker Nick Cave, to Riverside and Santa Barbara this week.