Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934, San Francisco) is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.
Rainer was one of the organizers of the Judson Dance Theater,
a focal point for vanguard activity in the dance world throughout the
1960s, and she formed her own company for a brief time after the Judson
performances ended. Rainer is noted for an approach to dance that treats
the body more as the source of an infinite variety of movements than as
the purveyor of emotion or drama. Many of the elements she
employed—such as repetition, patterning, tasks, and games—later became
standard features of modern dance.
In her early dances, Rainer focused on sounds and movements, and
often juxtaposed the two in arbitrary combinations. Somewhat inspired by
the chance tactics favored by Cunningham, Rainer’s choreography was a
combination of classical dance steps contrasted with everyday,
pedestrian movement. She used a great deal of repetition, and employed
narrative and verbal noises (including wails, grunts, mumbles and
shrieks, etc.) within the body of her dances.
Ordinary Dance (1962) was a combination of movement and
narrative, and featured the repetition of simple movements while Rainer
recited a poetic autobiography. One characteristic of Rainer’s early
choreography was her fascination with using non-dancer performers. We Shall Run
(1963) was such a piece, featuring twelve people clad in street clothes
running around the stage for seven minutes creating various floor
patterns. Some of the performers were dancers while others were not.
A turning point in Rainer’s choreography came in 1964, when, in an
effort to strip movements of their expressive qualities, she turned to
game structures to create works. All movement aimed to be direct,
functional, and to avoid stylization. In so doing, she aimed to remove
the drama from the dance movement, and to question the role of
entertainment in dance. Throughout this stage of her choreography she
worked towards movement becoming something of an object, to be examined
without any psychological, social or formal motives. She opted for
neutrality in her dances, presenting the objective presence of the human
body and its movements, and refused to project a persona or create a
narrative within her dances. In 1965, as a reaction to many of the
previously stated feelings, Rainer created her "No Manifesto," which was
a strategy formulated to demystify dance:
NO to spectacle.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator,
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator,
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved.
This exploration in reducing dance to the essentials climaxed with one of Rainer’s most famous pieces, Trio A (1966), initially part of a larger work entitled The Mind Is a Muscle. Something of a paradigmatic statement that questioned the aesthetic goals of postmodern dance, Trio A was a short dance that consisted of one long phrase. In Trio A, Rainer intended to remove objects from the dance while simultaneously retaining a workmanlike approach of task-based performance. Not simple but certainly not fancy, it was a demanding piece of work, both to watch and to perform. She explored such dynamics as repetition, the distribution of energy, and phrasing. The movement consisted of task-oriented actions, emphasizing neutral performance and featuring no interaction with the audience. The dancer was to never make eye contact with her observers, and in the case that the movement required the dancer to face the audience, the eyes were to be averted from the audience or the head was to be involved in movement. As the Museum of Modern Art describes it: "It freed the dancer's body from the rigid fragmentation and artificiality of choreographed movement."[3] The first time the piece was performed it was entitled The Mind is a Muscle, Part 1, and was performed by a set of three simultaneous solos by Rainer, Steve Paxton, and David Gordon. Trio A has been widely adapted and interpreted by other choreographers.
Last Updated-2011
Accessed-Friday 3rd February 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Rainer
Author-Kelly Apter
Last Updated-2010
Accessed-Friday 3rd February 2012
Yvonne Rainer-"Trio A"
Yvonne Rainer's "Trio A" could be described as simple, pedestrian movement, different to a trained technique, quirky, soft and slow.
ReplyDeleteRainer's quote means: Don't have to be within specific boundaries, dance for dance's sake, don't have to be trained.