Living a gallery performance by Yvonne Rainer and the endless possibilities of minimal art
-
- Yvonne Rainer, Diagonal (part of Terrain), 1963. Dancers in training with Pat Catterson and Yvonne Rainer, July 2014. Photo: Eva Herzog.
-
- Yvonne Rainer, Chair Pillow, 1969. Dancers in training with Pat Catterson and Yvonne Rainer, July 2014. Photo: Eva Herzog.
-
- Yvonne Rainer, Parts of the Body, late 1960s. Instructions for a class. Photo: Marcus J. Leith.
-
- Yvonne Rainer, Poster advertising This is the story of a woman who…, 1972–73. Performed by Yvonne Rainer and John Erdman, Festival d’Automne, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1972. Photo: Marcus J. Leith.
-
- Yvonne Rainer, Talking Solo (part of Terrain), 1963. Dancers in training with Pat Catterson and Yvonne Rainer, July 2014. Photo: Eva Herzog.
-
- Exhibition view, Yvonne Rainer: Dance Works, Raven Row, 2014. Photo: Marcus J. Leith.
Have you experienced that feeling, when leaving the cinema, that the real world you re-enter is tainted by the imaginary, virtual world you have been engrossed in for the past couple of hours? This was an experience created, intentionally or not, by attending a recent performance of four of Yvonne Rainer’s dances at Raven Row in London. The performances, a 45-minute dance programme, presented four times daily, was accompanied by an exhibition of theoretical writings, drawings, scores and film/video recordings from Rainer’s long career.
The visual arts and interdisciplinary nature of Rainer’s oeuvre was particularly felt in watching ‘Diagonal’ (1963) the first of the four dances performed live. The choreography presented a spectacle that was at times exhausting to imagine doing oneself, comical (but not slap-stick) and combined pre-formulated movements with chance-related configurations based on the performers’ spur of the moment decisions. The choreographic planning of Rainer’s genius and the physical and mimetic skills of the young performers held this apparent randomness together formally. ‘Diagonal’, performed in an almost square rectangular space, could be experienced to reference the making of a painting or drawing, whereby the fine artist will inevitably revert to a body language of gestures, despite the inclusion of chance decisions.
The accompanying display of choreographic drawings and film material, curated by Catherine Wood from Tate Modern, confirmed the broad output of Rainer’s multiple interests and talents. This substantial archive from the 1960s confirmed the burgeoning interdisciplinary nature of contemporary dance and art at the time and heralded a blurring of the lines of definition between disciplines. A great spirit of freedom of expression, that might be taken for granted by contemporary artists today, brought the performative nature of all visual and auditory art forms into focus.
Not restricted to the domain of the art gallery or theatre, the recognition of how we all move through space in our everyday surroundings was made more acute on leaving Raven Row after the live performances. Art and ‘real life’ really are one and the same experience.
September 22, 2014
