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In this memoir, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer traces her personal and artistic coming of age. Feelings Are Facts (the title comes from a dictum by Rainer's one-time psychotherapist) uses diary entries, letters, program notes, excerpts from film scripts, snapshots, and film frame enlargements to present a vivid portrait of an extraordinary artist and woman in postwar America. Rainer tells of a California childhood in which she was farmed out by her parents to foster families and orphanages, of sexual and intellectual initiations in San Francisco and Berkeley, and of artistic discoveries and accomplishments in the New York City dance world. Rainer studied with Martha Graham (and heard Graham declare, "when you accept yourself as a woman, you will have turn-out"--That is, achieve proper ballet position) and Merce Cunningham in the late 1950s and early 1960s, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962 (dancing with Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, and Lucinda Childs), hobnobbed with New York artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris (her lover and partner for several years), and Yoko Ono, and became involved with feminist and anti-war causes in the 1970s and 1980s. Rainer writes about how she constructed her dances--including The Mind Is a Muscle and its famous section, Trio A, as well as the recent After Many a Summer Dies the Swan--and about turning from dance to film and back to dance. And she writes about meeting her longtime partner Martha Gever and discovering the pleasures of domestic life. The mosaic-like construction of Feelings Are Facts recalls the composition-by-juxtaposition of Rainer's work in film and dance, displaying prismatic variations from what she calls her "reckless past" for our amazement and appreciation.

Rainer, Yvonne --- kunst --- autobiografie --- Verenigde Staten --- choreografie --- dans --- film --- experimentele film --- twintigste eeuw --- Rainer Yvonne --- 7.071 RAINER --- anno 1900-1999 --- anno 2000-2099 --- United States --- Choreographers --- Dancers --- Independent filmmakers --- Rainer, Yvonne, --- Chorégraphe --- Danse --- Cinéma --- Theatrical science --- dance [discipline] --- choreographers --- United States of America --- dance [performing arts genre] --- Film directors --- Book --- Dancing

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Feminist films --- Experimental films --- Feminist cinema --- Feminist motion pictures --- Women's liberation films --- Motion pictures --- History and criticism. --- Rainer, Yvonne, --- Film --- Rainer, Yvonne --- United States --- United States of America --- Film directors --- Book

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Rainer, Yvonne

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Theatrical science --- Rainer, Yvonne

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Originally published in 1974 by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Yvonne Rainer’s Work 1961-73 documents the artist’s landmark early works at the intersection of dance, performance, and art. The publication provides multifaceted insight into some of the artist’s most celebrated choreographic works, including Terrain (1962), Trio A (1966), Continuous Project-Altered Daily (1970), War (1970), Street Action (1970), and This is the story of a woman who … (1973), among many others.

Assembled ostensibly as a survey, Work 1961-73 features a multitude of documentary forms, including scripts, excerpts from the artist’s notebooks, press reviews, correspondence, photographic documentation, literary excerpts, contextualizing texts by the artist, diagrams, film stills, floor plans, scores, and more. As such, the publication resembles an artist book that generously gives the reader access to Rainer’s modes of working, as well as the social and political context around which the work was made. The publication is also a book of writing, with the artist’s frank, witty, and sometimes humorous prose intimately leading the reader through each work.

As the artist states in the book’s introduction:

I have a longstanding infatuation with language, a not-easily assailed conviction that it, above all else, offers a key to clarity. Not that it can replace experience, but rather holds a mirror to our experience, give us distance when we need it. So here I am, in a sense, trying to ‘replace’ my performances with a book, greedily pushing language to clarify what already was clear in other terms. But, alas, gone. This has seemed one good reason to compile a book ‘out of’ the remains of my performances, letting the language fall where it may. Let it be said simply “She usually makes performances and has also made a book.”

Work 1961-73 is an indispensable publication for anyone interested in the artist and the radical developments in dance and performance in the 1960s.

Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is a dancer, choreographer, writer,and filmmaker. She is a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater and worked primarily as a dancer and choreographer from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. Her choreographic work is widely recognized for blurring the lines between performers and non-performers, incorporating gestural and pedestrian movements, as well as classical dance steps and theatre. In 1972, Rainer began making films, producing seven experimental features, including Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), and MURDER and murder (1996). She returned to dance in 2000, producing new works commissioned by the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, the Performa Biennial, and The Museum of Modern Art. She is the author of several books including Feelings Are Facts: A Life (2006), A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts (1999), and Poems (2012). She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Awards, The Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Merce Cunningham Award, and a USA Grant.

Rainer, Yvonne --- Art --- dance [discipline] --- choreography --- dances [performance events] --- performance artists --- dance [performing arts genre]