Flare: Feelings Are Facts

The last few years have offered a range of material on dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. Now comes a documentary on her, Feelings Are Facts: the Life of Yvonne Rainer, courtesy of director Jack Walsh. Taking her 1966 dance piece Trio A as its starting point, the film recounts Rainer's creative output, only pausing midway through to discuss her life, an odd decision, I felt. The interviews with Rainer and a host of luminaries, from Carolee Schneeman, B. Ruby Rich and others, are set in sumptuous rooms with fireplaces and richly coloured walls. I thought they all must live in fabulous mansions until I saw the interview locations credited at the end. Ah, the duplicity of film.

Rainer is a fascinating subject and seeing her on screen, I marvelled she is in her 80s, now quite proudly out and evincing a weathered butchness in her dotage. Throughout the film, she outlines a range of credos, from working with her own limited body to her No Manifesto to her use of pedestrian movement. But, she is adamant she is no theorist. Another critic offers a rejoinder. Rainer's work, she says, is choreography as theory.

Yvonne Rainer: Dance Works

Over the years I have reviewed work by Yvonne Rainer, including her filmic and choreographic, but have never seen her dance work performed live. The show at Raven Row, curated by Catherine Wood, provides an opportunity to see four works performed, as well as see some of Rainer's notations and documentation of previous performances.

She's a puzzler, Yvonne Rainer. Not being knowledgeable about contemporary dance, I cannot say where she fits in or doesn't with standard practice. The dancers appeared before us in everyday clothes, five women and one man, and performed a series of moves, each one preceded by a spoken command. "C," for instance, was the aching back (my title), as they gripped their backs and dashed across the room. This piece, which dragged a bit for me, was Diagonal.

The second featured them using the second chamber, adjacent to the first, which was intriguing, as I had wondered when they would make use of it. They were also joined by a seventh dancer, a woman who appeared from the audience. She danced in jeans! I think this was Trio A.

The third piece featured the man alone (to the disgruntlement of my companion, Bev: "How feminist is that?"), tumbling through his moves while describing an essay he wrote about his great-grandfather and whether he should change it to fit the facts. That amused me. That was Talking Solo.

And then to the last piece, Chair Pillow, which alone featured musical accompaniment, the exquisite "River Deep, Mountain High", as the dancers brought out chairs and pillows and used them as partners. I was delighted by this and bopped along in my seat.

We took a turn through the exhibit, on three floors, in a gorgeous Huguenot building. I wanted to move into the fireplace, it was so roomy.

On the way home my back was complaining, and I gripped it, wearily. "C," I said.

Yvonne Rainer: Dance Works is on through 10 August at Raven Row, London. 

The Yvonne Rainer Project

Hopped on down to the Southbank Centre on Sunday to visit the ongoing Yvonne Rainer exhibit and specifically see some films that were only on show over the weekend. What I thought were her films turned out to be "Yvonne Rainer + artists' films". Hence, over an 80-minute period I only caught about 30 seconds of one of her films and it was one I'd seen before. Doh! Ah, well. Some of them were interesting, one was brilliant and quite a few were way too lo-o-ong. Ah, artists' films. Gotta love 'em. Sadly, can't really review them properly as most had no titles and I could not match up the films viewed to the descriptions in the programme. Ah, artists' films. Gotta love 'em x2.

So, to the ongoing exhibit. Well, there are three installations on view in the Gallery. Of these, I had a whale of a time at the circular work, After Many a Summer DIes the Swan: Hybrid, 2002. In this, a raised projector rotates 360 degrees, and the viewer follows the action by sitting in the centre. But, here's the fun part. The seat is a kind of Space hopper on wheels! Such fun. I was spinning all over the shop. If a group went, it would be like bumper cars. Awesome. The actual projections are quite enjoyable, as Rainer muses on the early 20th century avant-garde in Vienna.

The other two pieces in the Gallery were of less interest to me, being videos of some dance pieces she produced. Quite the multi-skiller is Ms. Rainer: filmmaker, choreographer, et al. I am not intimately familiar with her work, but her name crops up all over discussions of feminist cinema and art, and I found her role as the roller-skating artist in Madame X - an absolute ruler quite amusing.

Some of Rainer's own films, including Journeys from Berlin and The Man Who Envied Women, are on show at the BFI throughout December while an excerpt from Lives of Performers is on show in the Atrium.

The Yvonne Rainer Project continues at the Southbank Centre through 23 January 2011.