Rauschenberg first collaborated with choreographer Trisha Brown through the Judson Dance Theater, and she became one of his close friends and a key collaborator. She would regularly attend his expansive Thanksgiving dinners at Lafayette Street. "I feel like we have grown up together, successfully coping and conquering our most devastating setbacks while sanely adjusting to the lucky landfalls.... Trisha’s work is an active inspiration to me. The unpredictable turns of her mind and body are freshly unique and always surprising.... We always will be in concert and contact," he wrote fondly of her in 1996. Rauschenberg created the sets and costumes for a number of Brown’s dance company works, including Glacial Decoy (1979) and Set and Reset (1983).