Left: Trisha Brown’s 1979 Glacial Decoy featuring costumes and set design by Robert Rauschenberg. Photo: ©Nathaniel Tileston .
Right: CalArts’ 2025 restaging of the legendary work. Photo: Nico Savignano/CalArts.
Hi-res images available on request.
Valencia, CA (May 8, 2025) — On May 13 and 14, 2025, The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) presents the annual CalArts Spring Dance concert at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in downtown Los Angeles.
Featuring performances by members of CalArts’ 2025 graduating class, the two-night engagement highlights the agility, intelligence, and innovation of this dynamic group of artists. This year’s program, titled Launch, includes a special restaging of legendary choreographer Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy (which featured original costumes and set by artist Robert Rauschenberg).
While restagings of historical works can often only present excerpts or interpretations, artist, faculty member, and rehearsal director Sam Wentz sought to keep this production as close to the original as possible, including recreations of Rauchenberg’s gossamer costumes and sets featuring projected photographics.
Costume designer and CalArts faculty member Lilia Lopez sewed the costumes by hand to replicate the artist’s original designs. As four dancers in diaphanous dresses glide back and forth across the stage, Rauschenberg’s oversized black-and-white photographs of everyday objects are projected behind them, grounding the dancers’ movements in the material world.
Glacial Decoy, which premiered in 1979 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was the first piece that Brown, a pioneer of postmodern dance, created specifically for a conventional theater stage, after years of making work for nontraditional venues. Marking an important transition in Brown’s career, it was also her first collaboration with Rauschenberg, which would lead to 16 years of work together and the beginning of the choreographer’s practice of partnering with leaders of contemporary art.
In addition to Brown’s piece, CalArts Spring Dance also includes commissions from choreographers Genna Moroni and Omar Román de Jesús, along with a piece by CalArts alum Jobel Medina (Dance MFA 21), and four solo works choreographed by CalArts faculty member Gheremi Clay, guest choreographers Brian Enos and Spenser Theberge, and a self-choreographed piece by Nastia Yavorski (Dance BFA 25).
TICKETS & INFORMATION:
CalArts Spring Dance Concert
Tuesday, May 13 at 8 pm PDT (In-person)
Wednesday, May 14 at 8 pm PDT (In-person and livestreamed)
Ticketing:
$20 general ($16 for livestream)
$16 for REDCAT members and students ($13 for livestream)
$10 for CalArts students, faculty and staff ($8 for livestream)
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has set the pace for educating professional artists since 1970. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts has championed creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions. As successive generations of faculty and alumni have helped shape the landscape of contemporary arts, the Institute first envisioned by Walt Disney encompasses a vibrant, eclectic community with global reach, inviting experimentation, independent inquiry, and active collaboration and exchange among artists, artistic disciplines, and cultural traditions.
The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts’ mission is to educate the complete dance artist—agile, intelligent, and in command of an expanded skill-set to meet the fast-evolving demands of professional dance. The comprehensive BFA and MFA programs build high-level proficiencies in performance technique, choreography, dance production technology, and critical understanding of the art form, all within a global cultural context. Concentrated production seasons of aesthetically diverse work thrive in an atmosphere of creative exchange between professionally motivated students and a faculty of practicing artists.