Son[i]a #259
Yvonne Rainer
Exploring expressive vocabularies that have the power to dismantle the boundaries of artistic disciplines, Yvonne Rainer has pieced together an extraordinarily extensive career straddling the worlds of choreography, writing, and filmmaking. Aside from her participation in milestones of the American avant-garde of the sixties – from Minimalism to the Judson Dance Theatre –, her involvement in effervescent political moments like the protests against the Vietnam war and the feminist movements, and her autobiographical film investigations attest to her branching, experimental energy, which is still going strong today. In works such as her recent choreography “The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there’s nothing left to move?”, she combines a series of canonical texts with a cast of older dancers who can, Rainer says, “challenge the audience’s expectations and do things that no young dancer can do.”
SON[I]A talks to Yvonne Rainer about the passing of time, the transferability of dance, training as legacy and the body’s filmic decay. About tenacity, physicality, and influences. And about the turns, leaps, and tumbles of a multifaceted career spanning more than half a century.
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