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Searching... | 30000010345243 | GV1785.R25 A3 2006 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Memoir by the avant-garde dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker recounting her childhood years, sexual misadventures, and artistic explorations. If you're interested in Plato, you're reading the wrong book. If you're interested in difficult childhoods, sexual misadventures, aesthetics, cultural history, and the reasons that a club sandwich and other meals-including breakfast-have remained in the memory of the present writer, keep reading.
-from Feelings Are Facts
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 Merce Cunningham in the late 1950s and early 1960s, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, 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 antiwar 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.
Author Notes
Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. She is the author of Feelings Are Facts- A Life (MIT Press).
Reviews 3
School Library Journal Review
Another hope I have for this book...is that it will offer détente between the confrontational and absolutist pronouncements and questions of my youth and the more measured perceptions of my imminent old age... With this statement, choreographer/dancer/filmmaker Rainer articulates the thesis for her intimate memoir told through diary entries, letters, program notes, snapshots, and more. Rainer studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, and danced with Trisha Brown, among others. In a matter-of-fact style, she explores the various relationships of her life, analyzes herself and the artistic process, and examines her experimental work in dance (e.g., The Mind Is a Muscle) as well as the milieu of the early Sixties (Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol all make appearances). This unique view of the creative environment and portrait of the artist as a young woman is recommended for academic libraries with film and dance collections.--Barbara Kundanis, Geneva P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A transformative career in dance and the development of an experimental artist are examined in choreographer, dancer and filmmaker Rainer's engrossing memoir. Organized by concepts, such as her burgeoning sexuality and her cultural memories, rather than by strict chronology, the structure makes a difficult childhood seem even more unmoored and the dizzying parade of men she slept with more kaleidoscopic. Rainer doesn't have many kind words for anyone in her early years and is equally hard on herself. A ferocious intelligence combined with years of psychotherapy have made her intensely self-aware, and Rainer exposes her flaws, acknowledging potential objections to her behavior and character. Rainer's position at the epicenter of postmodernism in dance in the early '60s is illuminated through descriptions and photographs of working and playing with fellow Judson Dance Theater pioneers such as Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton, as well as artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Particularly fascinating are her descriptions of her intentions in creating certain dances and the struggle between directing dancers and allowing improvisation to color the work. The explorations of the Judson crew, including Rainer, continue to influence contemporary dance, and Rainer's chronicle of her journey as an artist is a winning addition to the literature about this groundbreaking era. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
"Another hope I have for this book is that it will offer d?tente between the confrontational and absolutist pronouncements and questions of my youth and the more measured perceptions of my imminent old age" With this statement, choreographer/dancer/filmmaker Rainer articulates the thesis for her intimate memoir told through diary entries, letters, program notes, snapshots, and more. Rainer studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, and danced with Trisha Brown, among others. In a matter-of-fact style, she explores the various relationships of her life, analyzes herself and the artistic process, and examines her experimental work in dance (e.g., The Mind Is a Muscle) as well as the milieu of the early Sixties (Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol all make appearances). This unique view of the creative environment and portrait of the artist as a young woman is recommended for academic libraries with film and dance collections.-Barbara Kundanis, Geneva P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
