Yvonne Rainer

Dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, writer

• Born: November 24, 1934
• Place of Birth: San Francisco, California

Education: Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance

Significance: Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. More than a decade into a successful dancing and choreography career, she decided instead to focus on making films. After a series of films that focused on both dance and deeply personal topics, Rainer restarted her dancing and choreography career at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Background

Yvonne Rainer was born in 1934 in San Francisco, California. Her parents were migrants who moved frequently and eventually settled in San Francisco. Her mother was of Polish-Jewish descent, and her father was Italian. As a child, Rainer was quiet, shy, and reserved and liked to read. Her parents sent her and her older brother, Ivan, to a boarding school in Palo Alto when she was five years old. Rainer remained very angry with her parents for sending her away to school.

The two children eventually moved back to live with their parents. When she was fifteen, Rainer made several friends from the New York art scene. She had planned to attend a theater school in San Francisco, but she instead moved to New York City in 1956 with her boyfriend, Al Held, who later became a famous painter.

In New York, Rainer took visual arts and acting classes. She then decided to study modern dance. She trained at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and began performing. Rainer also trained with dancer Merce Cunningham and ballerina Mia Slavenska. She joined various dance troupes and performed regularly.

In 1960, Rainer traveled back to California to take dance classes with Anna Halprin. There, she met Trisha Brown. The two became friends, and when back in New York, they founded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. The dancers at the theater focused on experimental performances. Rainer favored expressionless, random movements, a dance style for which she became known. In 1966, she created the Trio A dance that included continuous, uninterrupted simple movements. Dancers performing the Trio A, which usually took five minutes, were not to look directly at spectators. Rainer and the dancers spent the next few years traveling and dancing throughout the United States and Europe.

Rainer became interested in film in the late 1960s when she battled a few illnesses and required surgery. While in bed recuperating in 1966, she made the five-minute film Hand Film, in which she used no sound and only finger movements. She made other short films and later used them during dance performances.

Rainer and a group of Judson dancers then formed the Grand Union collective in 1970. During a Vietnam War protest, the dancers performed a version of Trio A, in which they were naked and wrapped in American flags. She became known for her controversial performances.

Life's Work

Another personal incident made Rainer retreat from dance for a time in 1971. She then decided to focus solely on filmmaking. She released her first film, In Lives of Performers, in 1972. She used Grand Union performers as the characters in the film, which heavily features dance and combines elements of other media styles. Rainer mixed in old footage, reenactments, and photo stills and used sound and other visuals to convey her message.

Her next two films also featured dance. Film About a Woman Who… (1974) explores sexual dissatisfaction, while Kristina Talking Pictures (1976) is about a woman pursuing a dance career. The latter strongly features dialogue, with a forty-minute scene of the characters just talking in bed.

Rainer's subsequent films focused on subjects such as race, politics, sexuality, feminism, identity, and aging. Journeys from Berlin/1971, released in 1980, explores several subjects, including psychoanalysis, and contrasts political violence and personal violence. The date in the title was personal to Rainer, as it was the year she tried to take her own life.

Her next three films became deeply personal, but Rainer stated that they were not autobiographical, even though they contained some elements from her life. The Man Who Envied Women (1985) focuses on a broken relationship; Privilege (1990) explores menopause and aging; and MURDER and murder (1996) is a comedy about an older lesbian couple and breast cancer. Rainer appeared in the latter film and showed off her mastectomy scars.

Rainer then decided to take a break from making films. She cited financial concerns as the main reason, saying it was difficult to raise the money needed to pay for her projects. She also admitted that she enjoyed screenwriting better than the actual filmmaking process. She spent the next few years writing poetry.

In 2000, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov asked Rainer to revive her dance career and choreograph a dance for his company. Rainer revisited her dance style from the 1960s and created "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan," which was performed during Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project. She released her memoir, Feelings Are Facts: A Life, in 2006. Rainer continued to choreograph and perform dances into the 2010s. In 2019, Rainer reconstructed her 1965 work Parts of Some Sextets. The work was then presented at the Kirkland Arts Center. In 2024, the choreographer's famed work Trio A was performed during Berlin Art Week.

Impact

Rainer became well known in the New York dance scene for her dance and choreography style. Her dances were sometimes viewed as controversial, but she used them as a way to express herself and her views. She left dance for a time to express herself as a filmmaker. However, she eventually returned to dance and choreography in her later career and continued to be sought after in the dance industry to create dances for shows.

Personal Life

Rainer married Al Held, an abstract expressionist painter. The pair divorced a few years later. She then dated artist Robert Morris, whom she called the love of her life. She attempted to commit suicide after they broke up in 1971. In the 1990s, Rainer came out as a lesbian. She then dated film scholar and critic Martha Gever.

Bibliography

Anderson, Melissa. "Yvonne Rainer, Anti-Drama Queen." Village Voice, 18 July 2017, www.villagevoice.com/2017/07/18/yvonne-rainer-anti-drama-queen. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Brannigan, Erin. "Yvonne Rainer." Senses of Cinema, July 2003, sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/rainer/#film. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Crimp, Douglas. "Dance Mom: Yvonne Rainer." Interview, 27 Dec. 2012, www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/dance-mom-yvonne-rainer/#‗. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Hubert, Craig. "Why Yvonne Rainer Gave Up Dance for Film." Artsy, 4 Aug. 2017, www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-modern-dance-pioneer-yvonne-rainer-traded-choreography-cinema. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Jackson, Merilyn. "Philly Dance World Celebrates Modern Master Yvonne Rainer." Inquirer, 13 Oct. 2016, www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/20161013‗Philly‗dance‗world‗celebrates‗modern‗master‗Yvonne‗Rainer.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Kelsey, Colleen. "Screen Time with Yvonne Rainer." Interview, 20 July 2017, www.interviewmagazine.com/film/yvonne-rainer-the-film-society-of-lincoln-center. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

"Neue Nationalgalerie: PERFORM! Festival Series Marking Berlin Art Week 2024." SMB, 9 Sept. 2024, www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/neue-nationalgalerie-perform-festival-series-marking-berlin-art-week-2024/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Rockwell, John. "A Dancer's Turbulent Steps through Life." New York Times, 7 July 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/books/07book.html?mcubz=1. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Roy, Sanjoy. "Step-by-Step Guide to Dance: Yvonne Rainer." Guardian, 24 Dec. 2010, www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/dec/24/step-by-step-yvonne-rainer. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.