“An Endless Horizon”: A Conversation with Cecily Campbell about Glacial Decoy

Glacial Decoy, a dance by Trisha Brown with costumes and set design by Robert Rauschenberg and commissioned by the Walker Art Center, premiered May 7, 1979, at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. The piece was a significant turning point for Brown. For years, she designed her dances for alternative spaces: a church gymnasium, on rooftops, on the sides of buildings—even on rafts in nearby Loring Pond. Glacial Decoy was her first work conceived for a conventional theater stage.

Although Brown and Rauschenberg had been friends and performed in each other’s works since the early 1960s, Glacial Decoy marked the beginning of a deeper, long-lasting collaboration. Rauschenberg designed the costumes and an animated backdrop of large-scale projections of his own black-and-white photographs that shift and fade over the course of the dance.

As part of research for the exhibition Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg: Glacial Decoy, Assistant Curator Brandon Eng and Manager of Interpretation Janine DeFeo talked with dancers Cecily Campbell and Lisa Kraus, both of whom have performed and taught this work.

The conversation started with Campbell walking Eng and DeFeo through clips of a 2024 performance of Glacial Decoy. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Cecily Campbell: In the beginning of Glacial Decoy, I feel the emptiness of the space. It’s quite sparse; a dancer enters on the periphery and then slips out.

We’re drawn to this slipping in and out at the edges. We’re also introduced to this element in which a dancer comes in from one side and, when exiting, draws in a dancer from the other. This creates a tidal back-and-forth and magic of something pulling from one side and drawing from the other—and then that reversing.

This spatial law feels mysterious. And she continues to play with that. Just as we’ve gotten used to this, Trisha breaks a rule that she’s made, which she loves to do.

Campbell: Next, two new dancers move in a circular pattern and collide. In the beginning, there’s a separateness between the dancers and a formality and elegance in that space between them.

This collision spews and bubbles out into a duet. The movement world feels similar, but its spatial dynamic is so different. We see bodies slipping and sliding past each other, in and out of unison. Even though there doesn’t continue to be a lot of contact between them, it’s as if at any moment they could collide again.

Campbell: Once comfortable inside this duet, we return to the original formality. The two duetting dancers arrive back into this linear, horizontal structure that then draws in a third. 

For the first time, we see four dancers and the entire form. When the quartet enters, you see the middle duet plus the outer duet exiting and entering. You’ve arrived at the full vision, which was there all along but only seen in separate elements. 

Brandon Eng: How would you describe Glacial Decoy? Are there specific movement phrases or gestures that you associate with it?

Campbell: Glacial Decoy is a gem of a dance. The movement is a delight to be inside—and an incredible challenge. Upholding the essential spatial rules involves, especially inside the quartet at the end, constantly maintaining the right amount of distance that delivers one dancer offstage and brings another on. If we’re not delivering that as dancers, the piece isn’t there. 

It’s this combination of intense attention to specificity and kinetic abandon. I think Trisha was honoring the form, the craft, of dance. It’s such a dance for dancing. There’s the order in which she reveals what she’s doing slowly over time and in relationship to Rauschenberg’s pictures, which deliver part of the idea in their spatial mechanism. 

There is something wild at the core that reappears in the fullness of the piece when you start to imagine an endless horizon of coming in and out. By the end you’re inside the magnificence of this full form, but I feel that she’s both generous and tricky in how she lets us in. 

Janine DeFeo: What is it like to learn the choreography for Glacial Decoy? What were your initial impressions during rehearsals? How do you get something that is both sequenced and explosive into your head and body? 

 Campbell: Learning movement and choreography is so mysterious and magical to me even after many years. Learning from a body that is not your own and translating it, making it your own, and reoffering it so that it’s readable again—that’sone of my favorite parts of being a dancer.  

The first group in my generation of the company had the incredible privilege of learning from Lisa Kraus, an original company member who made Glacial Decoy with Trisha. It was amazing to see the movement spilling out of Lisa. She embodies its physicality and spirit, the visceral memory of it but also the very present way that it arrives in her that day.  

The outer form of the movement in Glacial Decoy travels in a very particular way and delivers you exactly where you need to be. We discuss the bubbling effervescence of the dance, the lightness that spills through it and our bodiesalmost without rest. It has a stream-of-consciousness feeling and can’t help but keep pouring out of itself. 

There are many evocative, familiar-but-unfamiliar gestures that feel like little secrets. They’re a language of their own that ripples throughout the larger, more recognizably physical movements. There’s this constant tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu [making a sound indicating a running procession] of gestures. 

 DeFeo: If it’s not too much of a secret, could you name one of these gestures? 

 Campbell: There’s a movement that we often call “walking the dog,” which feels like suddenly you’re being pulled by the leash of a runaway dog. It pulls the body forward and then spills it back out to the side in a snaking, zigzagging movement.  

I love one very subtle one. We’ve rushed forward and end up with our heads down toward our feet. Then we stand up, take one step forward, and there’s a small flip of the wrist, a little tick of the palms that curves down into the hip and brushes down the leg. 

A gesture arrives and—it’s gone. That’s how we speak: Words arrive and immediately fall into the next. I think Trisha wanted to catch the eye with those gestures, to wink with them a bit. They empower us in the space, but no onegesture is overly important or microscopically examined. We talk a lot about this idea of doing the gesture and getting off it. 

Eng: In a 1979 conversation with Trisha, Yvonne Rainer describes the travel in Glacial Decoy as mysterious; people get from place to place in a way that’s hard to perceive. I think the “walking the dog” speaks to that. You get tricked into thinking the dancers are in one spot and then they’re in a different spot, but you don’t really see them move. 

Campbell: I love that idea. It’s almost as if you step into the beginning of the movement and then, as long as you keep doing the movement, you end up where you need to be. It’s subtly different from other choreographies. It’s as if there’s a moving sidewalk under the stage delivering everybody where they need to be, which is so satisfying. 

In rehearsal, we tape out the thirds of the space and practice down to which half of which step crosses these invisible lines and brings the next dancer in or sends one to exit. In the same breath that I’m saying it’s this mysterious, magical delivery system, it is on the inside quite intentional. But hopefully that becomes invisible, and it doesn’t look labored. It’s in the DNA of the dance. 

Eng: How would you characterize how it feels to perform the choreography? Are there sections that are especially challenging or rewarding? 

Campbell: Performing this piece is particularly full. It’s so substantial. From a kinetic point of view, it’s a waterfall of a ride. Performing the center duet begins in this sensual, intimate, playful relationship with your partner. It’s a luscious opening, being in such close proximity and in these playful spatial relationships together. 

And then as the duet starts to end and you feel inside of it, it pulls in the third dancer and begins the final quartet. It feels wonderful to have been inside this little interpersonal duet and then arrive in the elegance of this quartet form and feel the support from the edges of the space. We are so strong in the beginning and then, in the center duet, we are without support. And then we return to that anchor. 

It’s like how we were talking earlier about some of these parts just deliver you where you need to be. The end doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like something that could loop right back and continue to cycle. 

Finally, Glacial Decoy is full of imagery, much more so than in Brown’s other pieces. There’s a “polar bear,” there’s “falling into a haystack,” there’s a “fisherman’s basket that carries you backward in space.” There’s the “walking the dog,” which I mentioned before. It’s almost like Rauschenberg’s pictures. All these images you can embody as you’re going through the movement feels particular to Glacial Decoy. 

Eng: And those phrases come from Trisha via Lisa? 

Campbell: That’s a good question. As with so many things in ephemeral art forms, it’s sometimes tricky to identify origins, but I imagine they probably developed them together as they were learning the movement from Trisha. I’m not sure who coined what, but they’ve stayed consistent. 

Eng: How would you describe the mood of Glacial Decoy? 

Campbell: It’s a little slippery. It has an important formality, absolutely in how she’s using the proscenium. There’s an elegance to the spatial construction. I think it’s sensual and very feminine.  

It defies being totally grasped. Just when you think you understand what’s going on, she changes it. Or just when you think you are inside a certain element, she shifts it again. So, it’s also a little defiant. 

It has this external and internal life that contributes to the mood. And the black and white is striking and sets a particular tone.  

DeFeo: What does it feel like to perform in front of Rauschenberg’s images? To what extent do you pay attention to the set and the images?  

Campbell: There’s another dance happening behind the dance for the audience. We can hear the ticking of the projector in this rhythmic mode. It’s the only sound present on the stage, aside from the sounds of our bodies. It’s a sense of time. We’re not using that meter to mark any of our movement, but it is a measure of the consistency of time passing through the space. Interestingly, it is audio rather than visual that we’re tracking. 

There’s no music in the piece, and we’re relying on our internal timing and practiced song of the movement. Sometimes, if we turn and see the projections, I can say, “Okay, good. That’s the cow. That’s what I normally see in this moment.” Or “Oh, the cow isn’t there, or did I miss it? Am I earlier? Aren’t I late?” These are fleeting moments, and meanwhile the dance continues. 

There’s such an independence to the elements in all Rauschenberg and Trisha’s collaborations. It’s satisfying to be on stage knowing that there’s this incredible set behind you that is just as much in motion. We’re tracking independently, but we are trying to time. There’s a slide of a railroad sign, RR, that we’ve learned is a little homage to Robert Rauschenberg; it’s his initials. We try to end as that slide is traveling to its ending spot. That’s our last chance to check in with our time of the dance and Rauschenberg’s voyage, and hopefully we’re aligned enough to deliver that last image. 

The slides deliver this idea of constant horizontal progression that’s more than echoed in the choreography. It is the choreography. And they offer a consciousness of time and space passing both physically and metaphorically in this linear way.  

DeFeo: That’s a beautiful lead-in to what I wanted to ask next, which is what does the title Glacial Decoy mean to you? Is there something specifically Glacial Decoy about the movement? 

Campbell: I try not to get too literal about it, but there is a wateriness to the piece. We talk a lot about this quality of effervescence, of bubbling, the constant energy of water. It’s interesting to think about this word “glacial,” which is thick, powerful, a prodding progress through time.  

And the “decoy”—again, not to be too literal about it, but Trisha is a master of the choreographic wink. And Glacial Decoy has an infamous one. We’ve gotten comfortable in this quartet form, then the exit of one dancer pulls in anotherdancer we haven’t seen yet—well into the piece’s third quarter. This fifth dancer is there for just a moment before exiting and never returns. Ah ha! Are there actually five dancers? Are there twenty? Could this dance be spilling out the sides of this theater and continuing into the horizon forever? Where are the edges of this space? 

Perhaps there’s an element of a decoy in there, something that throws you off course just when you think you’ve figured it out.  

Eng: Rauschenberg, who suggested the title, had several ice-related series. In the mid-1970s, he created the Hoarfrosts; he took the name from a translation of Dante’s Inferno. And the Hoarfrosts look like the first set of costumes.  

People wonder: Is Rauschenberg’s contribution the decoy or is the dance the decoy? One is always a distraction. Maybe it’s your split attention that’s the real focus. 

Eng: I keep thinking about how the glacier advances slowly but it also calves, breaking apart. Glaciers have this explosive, unpredictable, and sudden sense of movement. Is ice a sculpture or a performance? That’s why the images of ice and the ice plant in the background are so beautiful. The change of state, solid to liquid, seems very apt for Trisha’s dance. 

Eng: Keeping with the theme of Rauschenberg’s contribution to the work, can you describe the costumes and what they feel like to perform in? 

Campbell: The Glacial Decoy costumes are, without a doubt, my favorites. They feel wonderful to dance in. I remember Lisa saying in rehearsal, “Okay, but think about the dress. Think about this white billowing silk dress and the poof it will make suspended in the air.”  

There’s something that feels very Romantic about them, for lack of a better word. There’s a gesture there to the Romantic ballerinas. They’re very freeing, very liberating, but there’s something powerful about them as well. You hear and feel them move with you throughout the dance. You swoosh and swoosh past them as you’re dancing. The lift of your skirt, your legs underneath, and your skin in contact with the material adds an experiential sensuality. 

Eng: How do they compare to other costumes for Trisha’s dances or other costumes generally? 

Campbell: I think there’s a bit of a sisterhood with the Set and Reset costumes, which Rauschenberg also designed. In both, there’s a tactile, sensual experience and freedom as we’re moving; the dresses really dance with you. 

But there’s something about the Glacial Decoy costumes that is so much of the piece, which is interesting because they’ve changed them from the originals.  

DeFeo: That’s fantastic, and it’s something we noticed watching performance documentation. When you perform Glacial Decoy, what’s your perception of audience reactions? 

Campbell: It is an interesting piece to try to feel an audience through. There’s quietness, not just because there’s no score other than the sound of the projections changing. There are also moments of quietness, mood-wise. The duet especially asks the audience to zoom in. 

It’s interesting to see the light bulb turn on for the audience as the compositional form reveals itself. There’s an element of surprise as you see, “Oh, okay, wait, so when one person exits, that pulls another person on, and now they’re doing it the other way,” and the winking moments Trisha offers throughout the piece.  

There’s a sense of the audience gaming out the rules. There’s that unanswerable question of what the dance is about. Trisha answers that question but with playfulness and trickery. She reveals not what the dance is about but what it is, how it is dancing itself. It is a tangible exchange between the stage and the audience. The dancing of it is, for me, such a pleasure, and you hope that the audience is having as much of a ride as you are. 

Eng: Is there anything audiences should know or consider when watching Glacial Decoy? What would you tell them to help process what they’re seeing? 

Campbell: I’d note it was the first piece Trisha made for the proscenium stage, so it’s interesting to keep an eye on how she’s using that space and asking us to examine what’s possible there—maybe defying expectations, turning things on their head, and delivering a marvelously crafted dance. 

Watching the piece for the first time is a wonderful introduction to Trisha’s phenomenal craftsmanship and her playful spirit of thinking outside of the box.  

DeFeo: I’m curious how your thinking about the piece changed over time. Do you see new things in it every time?  

Campbell: There’s been a personal evolution with Glacial Decoy. Initially, I was just totally enamored with the movement, feeling, “I want to be inside of that. I want to feel what that feels like.”  

That longing continues to be my central point of connection. But in learning the piece, you become involved with the form and actual craft. The movement is so tied to the spatial dynamic that they’re inseparable. There is an evolution as you learn and understand the piece spatially and compositionally. 

Glacial Decoy is so well-preserved; it keeps its spirit. You can see that it’s still bubbling inside all the dancers from whom I’ve learned the movement. 

I was thinking about lineage and history through Trisha’s company, and there is something wonderful in the idea of an endless horizon of dancers moving through the piece. It feels like a gift from Trisha to those of us who have learned, danced, and continue to teach it. 

Dance is by nature an ephemeral creature, and Glacial Decoy touches that in this really grounding way. I hope that it continues to move through time and the dancers in the company and out in the world forever in that endless horizon.  

Eng: Cecily, have you taught this piece? 

Campbell: I have. I’ve never taught it to a company that is then going to be performing it, but Jamie Scott and I taught the movement to current company members before Carolyn Lucas and Lisa Kraus came in. And I’ve taught it in workshop settings without an associated performance. I hope there’s more opportunity to teach it as I go. I’m at the beginning, but I have the sense that it’s as rich to teach as it is to perform. There’s so much about Trisha’s brain and body inside of it; it’sa treasure chest to explore. 

I like to highlight the rippling wildness of the movement but also to play with the container to create outer limits that the movement can crash and splash up against. 

It becomes about finding a range: “What does this movement feel like if I let it run wild? What does it feel like if I give it some sense that it’s ricocheting in the space?” That container is different for each dancer. Finding where that outer limit is involves a lot of individual exploration.  

Another important element of teaching Glacial Decoy is finding the motor together. We talk a lot about that inside Trisha’s work because there are very, very rarely musical motors. All that rhythm is built from the inside, from just us being inside of the song of the movement together. That’s a fun thing to teach—discovering what kinetic world we’re in and then working together to look at the timing and duration. 

That tuning is important in all of Trisha’s work, but particularly in Glacial Decoy because it’s the only constant meter through the piece. The unison is so intense that if that’s not there, the piece isn’t there. 

Eng: Are there other aspects of the piece that you find particularly difficult to communicate or preserve?  

Campbell: There’s the element of being so attentive to spacing, maintaining distance between dancers so that there’s the magic of one dancer being pulled on and another exiting. The question becomes how, in teaching, to inject that awareness into the movement so that it can become a part of the movement rather than plopped on top. 

The reality is that you are aware of it. In the performance, there is a part of your physical brain checking in with where you are in the space. However, how do you do that without shutting down a certain sense of expression or freedom, without dancing like you’re managing something?  

DeFeo: I’m wondering where you think Glacial Decoy sits within Trisha Brown’s larger body of work? 

Campbell: There’s a luxury of being able to look at Glacial Decoy from the perspective of 2025. You can see some elements that Trisha continues to run through her fingers. The exploration of space and introducing a rule about space into the dance carries through in so many ways. You can see it strongly in Set and Reset; the dance travels in a very specific way up one side, across the front, down another side, and across the back. 

There’s a group of dances called the Unstable Molecular Cycle, which is very much about these molecular, swirling, amorphous, but very intimate relationships. And I think the central duet—the contact, the almost contact, the brushing past, the slipping through—has a glimmer of that element.  

I like to imagine that Glacial Decoy marks Trisha standing at a doorway. And little did we know how much she would pour through that doorway. Glacial Decoy is a magnificent landmark from which to look both backward and forward.