AN EVENING WITH YVONNE RAINER

Yvonne Rainer was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, a group that profoundly influenced modern dance in the following decades. Between 1962 and 1975 she presented her choreography throughout the United States and Europe. Since 1972 Rainer has completed seven experimental feature-length films. Her latest dance, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan had its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in June 2000.

Since the 1960s, Rainer has challenged boundaries, repressive ideologies, traditional narrative, conservative politics and conventional representation of the body, of women, of sexuality. Whether she's dealing with Schönberg and the raise of nazism in Vienna or a woman's internalized rage and conflicted emotions in downtown Manhattan, Rainer keeps astonishing, delighting and challenging audiences.

Covering a span of almost 30 years, the evening at REDCAT will start with Rainer's first video:

AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN: HYBRID

2002, 31 min, video, Los Angeles premiere

A combination of dance and literary fragments, Yvonne Rainer's first video includes footage from videotaped rehearsals of her recent choreography for the White Oak dance project (commissioned by the Barishnikov Dance Foundation), as well as text and images dealing with art and politics in fin-de-siècle Vienna. These elements are juxtaposed to highlight the current state of the avant-garde - a period of art-making with complex relations to a prolonged historical crisis. (Rotterdam Film Festival, New York Video Festival)

Followed by the legendary classic:

FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO

1974, 105 min, 16 mm, b/w, sound

"This is the poetically licensed story of a woman who finds it difficult to reconcile certain external facts with her image of her own perfection."
(—excerpt from the soundtrack)

This elegant, breathtakingly beautiful 'reworking' of a pre-existing multi-media dance performance "pushes further Rainer's thoughts on representation, narrative, sexual relationships, and the politics of personal power manipulations. Contradiction is the basic grammar of the film, dialectic its movement, cliché frequently its vocabulary. From the first opening scene, Rainer plays upon audience expectations of filmic traditions and foils its fulfillment." (B. Ruby Rich).

Other related public programs

Getty Center:
"Structures and Systems: Minimal Art in the United States" (Saturday 1 May 2004) and "An Evening of Dance with Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti" (Saturday May 8, 2004, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday May 9, 3:00 pm) Reservation and information: (310) 440-7300 or www.getty.edu

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions:
"Yvonne Rainer - Radical Juxtapositions 1961 - 2002" (5 May - 8 August 2004)