Catch this now: A new, slow look at "Trio A"

Video installation of
David Michalek's SlowDancing/TrioA
at Danspace Project
(photo: Lily Cohen)

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.

--Yvonne Rainer's No Manifesto

Okay, no glamour, maybe, but I am completely seduced by the wealth of physical energy and concealed/revealed information streaming through David Michalek's slowed-down video interpretation of Yvonne Rainer's Trio A (1966), here and now at Danspace Project spanning three, large suspended video screens and performed by a succession of 46 soloists. Pat Catterson, a member of Rainer's Raindears troupe, coached performers in the tricky subtleties of Rainer's doing without DOING!  For example, if you reach down as if to pick a bottle from the floor, don't make much of it. It's just a bottle and just a reach. No drama.

David Thomson, one of 46 dancers
performing in Michalek's SlowDancing/TrioA
(photo: Mark Kornbluth)

Anyone thinking Rainer's so-called pedestrian movement is, in fact, simple or easy will get a big ol' surprise from Michalek's SlowDancing/TrioA and might even find a kind of virtuosity in it. (If you caught Michalek's original Slow Dancing, in 2007, at Lincoln Center Plaza, you know he knows from glamorous star power, spectacle...and s-l-o-wwwwnesssss.) But, for goodness sake, was Rainer's Trio A ever anything but engagingly focused, confident, exhilarating in execution? No way will she ever not be my anti-hero hero.

Michalek's SlowDancing/TrioA, presented in collaboration with Rainer, continues at Danspace Project tonight and concludes tomorrow evening. Both screenings are available from 6pm to 10pm. Viewers may come and go as they please and can also view Sally Banes' 1978 film of Rainer dancing Trio A.

Admission is free with RSVP recommended. For reservations, visit danspaceproject.org or call (866) 811.4111.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Subscribe in a reader

"Dance on Camera" at Film Society of Lincoln Center, February 12-16

Above: Dance artist and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer in
Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer
Below: Cuban ballerina Viengsay Valdés in
Horizons/Horizontes
These two documentaries will be screened
at Film Society of Lincoln Center
in the 2016 Dance on Camera festival.

Curated by Liz Woolf and Joanna Ney, the 2016 edition of Dance on Camera once again explores the multifaceted histories and expressions of dance through film documentaries, shorts, features, experimental works, and music videos. You won't want to miss Jack Walsh's Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, an engrossing collage of interviews and footage in which radical dance artist Rainer, now 81, reveals "I love existing in front of spectators" and traces her adventurous, eccentric pathway from the Judson revolution to her filmmaking work and subsequent return to choreography. Why not subtitle this The Lives of Yvonne Rainer? She's had as many as any wily cat.

See Feelings Are Facts (82 min) on the festival's closing night, Friday, February 16 at 8pm, including a Rainer/Walsh Q&A. (Click for details and tickets.)

I also got advance look at two films with a Cuban connection:

My body is in Cuba, but my soul is in Africa, and it is my African soul that nourishes my Cuban body.

--Alfredo Duquesne Mora (El Duque), Cuban artist, woodcarver and stonemason, in They Are We

They Are We: In this affecting film, anthropologist and first-time director Emma Christopher documents how she united people from an Afro-Cuban ethnic group, Ganga-Longoba, with their counterparts across the Atlantic in a Sierra Leone village. Learning that these Cubans, descendants of African slaves, know and regularly practice their traditional songs and dances, the Africans react with surprise, keen interest and generosity. Despite notable redundancy, Christopher's film has genuine emotional impact.

See The Are We (77 min) on Monday, February 15 at 3:15pm, including a Q&A with Emma Christopher. (Click for details and tickets.)

All along, I knew there's an easy life I could have chosen but did not.

--lyrics from "With My Heart" by Heidi Happy, in Horizons/Horizonte 

Horizons/Horizontes: Eileen Hofer connects intimate and ultimately poignant portraits of three generations of Cuban ballet dancers. The film opens with vintage footage of Cuba's queen of classical dance, the now nonagenarian Alicia Alonso, flawlessly performing multiple fouettes. Then Hofer quickly introduces us to two younger women aspiring to follow in Alonso's footsteps at Ballet Nacional de Cuba--Viengsay Valdés, a rising star, and Amanda de Jesús Pérez Duarte, a student hoping to join the company. Their stories demonstrate how much ballet requires--a sacrificial investment of body and psyche to create the illusion of effortless grace, an art both sensual and brutal. Cuba keeps ballet and its stellar dancers tied closely to the glory of its revolution--a political relationship completely unimaginable on the US scene.

See Horizons/Horizontes (71 min) on Saturday, February 13, 1pm. (Click for details and tickets.)

For a complete lineup of 

Dance on Camera screenings

and associated events, click here.

Screenings will be held at:

Walter Reade Theater
16 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Panels and free events will be held at:

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Auditorium
144 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Yvonne Rainer "flashlight matinee" cancelled

Danspace Project UPDATE: All Yvonne Rainer performances have been cancelled, including the "flashlight" matinee scheduled for Saturday, November 3rd. Please visit http://www.danspaceproject.org/ for information on the January rescheduling of these events.

Anonymous Abramović critic reveals self and conditions

An Open Letter From a Dancer Who Refused to Participate in Marina Abramovic’s MOCA Performance
by Sara Wookey
posted in ArtInfo, November 29, 2011

Yvonne Rainer trashes Abramovic plan

Yvonne Rainer Denounces Marina Abramovic's Planned MOCA Gala Performance as "Grotesque"
by Julia Halperin, ARTINFO, November 11, 2011

Full text of Rainer letter

Yvonne Rainer to present her "Poems"

On Tuesday, October 18, The Kitchen will present a special reading of Poems, the first book of poems by choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, who will read the selections herself. Published by artist Paul Chan's Badlands Unlimited, the book is comprised of works that have never been published, most written in the late 1990s. Full of wit and candor, Poems offers a window into the life and mind of one of America's greatest living artists.

The reading will be followed by a conversation between Rainer and The Kitchen's Executive Director and Chief Curator Tim Griffin, who penned an introduction to the volume.

After the reading, Rainer will remain to sign copies of Poems, which will be available for purchase.

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30pm -- Free admission


The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Wendy Perron gets "The Big Picture"

Here's a wonderful reflection on the occasion of Trisha Brown's 40th Anniversary performances at MOMA by Dance Magazine's editor-in-chief and blogger, Wendy Perron.

The Big Picture of Trisha Brown
by Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine, January 19, 2011

Dance Magazine reviews: Cardona and more

My Dance Magazine review of Wally Cardona's Really Real at BAM Harvey Theater is now up here.

In coming months, Dance Magazine will feature my print or online reviews of works by the following choreographers:

Aszure Barton (Ringling International Arts Festival, Sarasota, FL)

Deborah Hay and Yvonne Rainer (Baryshnikov Arts Center)

Tamar Rogoff (La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre)

Chunky Move (BAM Gilman Opera House)

Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba (BAM Gilman Opera House)

and, of course, I'll let you known when these are posted or printed. As always, thanks for your interest!

Philly ICA to present "Dance with Camera"

Spanning 70 years of art and film, including photos, video and Hollywood musicals, Dance with Camera explores the crossover between artists and dancers who choreograph for the camera instead of merely using it as a documentary device. Participants include Eleanor Antin, Charles Atlas, Bruce Connor, Tacita Dean, Maya Deren, Oliver Herring, Bruce Naumann and Yvonne Rainer.

The exhibition will be on view at Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania--September 10, 2009 to March 21, 2010--and is expected to travel.

--from Art in America, Annual Guide 2009-2010

Complete program and visiting information

Yvonne Rainer films at Chez Bushwick

Yvonne Rainer Film Series

Every Wednesday, June 4th - June 18th, Chez Bushwick will host The Yvonne Rainer Film Series, featuring selected films by acclaimed dancer, choreograper, director, and post-modern pioneer, Yvonne Rainer.

---

The Lives of Performers
By Yvonne Rainer
Wednesday, June 4th
7:30pm
$5

Murder and Murder
By Yvonne Rainer
Wednesday, June 11th
7:30pm
$5

Privilege
By Yvonne Rainer
Wednesday, June 18th
7:30pm
$5

---

All screenings will take place at:

Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11 (At White)
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.418.4405
info@chezbushwick.net

• Click here to download event flyer •