Freedom of movement

Yvonne Rainer reacted against slick, trained virtuosity, and young choreographers are taking up the cause

BACK IN THE 1960s, Yvonne Rainer led a vociferous challenge against older, established choreographers. Now in her 70s, she has yet to feel similar reaction from a younger generation. Instead, they idolise her. "She is a constant inspiration for young choreographers," says Niamh Condron, director of This Torsion Dance Company. It's a common response within Ireland's growing independent dance sector, who have the chance to see Rainer's most recent work, Spiraling Down, as part of a double bill at the Dublin Dance Festival.

A central figure in the 1960s performance scene that centred around Judson Church in New York, Rainer and her colleagues – including Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay and Trisha Brown – reacted against the trained virtuosity of ballet and modern dance. For them, truth and beauty was found in both trained and untrained bodies performing task-based dances that favoured pedestrian movement over choreographed sequences.

Condron has found liberation in this belief that choreography isn’t about creating and arranging slick moves on pristinely trained bodies. Rather, it is about finding your own authentic voice, free from the expectations of history or tradition.

“They have showed the choreographer needn’t be dictated by a narrative, a musical score or a dance technique. Any movement can be used when making your dances,” she says. During the 1960s, experimentation (and sometimes extremely long dances) pushed audiences’ patience to the limit and many of those that didn’t walk out stayed to boo, hiss or read the newspaper. But, along with the visceral thrill of artistic anarchy, there was an important aesthetic shakedown taking place.

“I’m a third generation influenced by the Judson Church,” says choreographer and Aosdána member Cindy Cummings. “My teachers were pupils of Steve Paxton and my own choreography owes a lot to the ideas of the 1960s.” In particular, the Judson Church group helped break down barriers between audience and performer, an issue that still pervades in dance with its emphasis on training and precision.

“I like to think that I’m just a person who is dancing for other people, rather than a fabulous performer that people pay to see do things they can’t,” she says.

The strength of the Judson Church group’s reaction was captured in Rainer’s written No Manifesto from 1965: “No to spectacle, no to virtuosity, no to transformations and magic and make-believe, no to the glamour and transcendency of the star image, no to the heroic, no to the anti-heroic, no to trash imagery, no to involvement of performer or spectator, no to style, no to camp, no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer, no to eccentricity, no to moving or being moved.”

Whereas Cummings wouldn’t subscribe to every clause, she acknowledges that the overall rejection of superficiality and stardom is still important. “The Judson Church artists used almost scientific methods to discover how a body could move without over-emoting. The emotion wasn’t stuck on top of movement, but came from within the movement itself,” she says.

Almost half a century later, Rainer is somewhat tired of the No Manifesto, which she saw as a clear-the-air outburst rather than a credo that would stalk her throughout her artistic life.

“I’d still agree with some aspects like ‘no to spectacle’ and with ‘no to camp’ . . . well, I still think that a little goes a long way,” she says. “But rejecting the wiles of the performer? I don’t think I agree with that anymore. Some performers just have charisma, and others don’t.

“It was never meant to be prescriptive,” she adds, yet the rhetoric has proved difficult to shake off. One opportunity came in 2008 in a group show called Manifesto Marathon at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Alongside manifestos by artists such as Yoko Ono and Gilbert George, Rainer presented a reconsideration that was printed alongside the original.

But some young choreographers still see a need to constantly re-articulate that original manifesto. After a performance of Dog of All Creation, the Irish duo Fitzgerald Stapleton was at the receiving end of critical comments on the online journal Choreograph.net: "If the Bolshoi [Ballet], Batsheva [Dance Company] and [Ballet] Preljocaj are three dance troupes whose performances can be considered as 'beautiful' and 'graceful', what was Dog of All Creationsupposed to represent? The mathematical opposite? What beauty is there in two girls just plainly walking around a stage like we walk down the laundry room or to the mail box, not trying to move in any aesthetic way?"

The performance wasn’t in some backwater either: it was at the Judson Church.

“The prejudice is still out there,” says Áine Stapleton of Fitzgerald Stapleton. “But

what artists like Yvonne Rainer have taught us is to remain honest to what interests you. Don’t follow fashion. Don’t try to be trendy. Just be true to your ideals.”

The freedom of the Judson Church remains a touchstone for Fitzgerald Stapleton as they cross disciplines to explore visual art and film. "We've also done some graffiti and I've set up a band with dancers Emma Martin, Jessica Kennedy and Justine Cooper called You Can Call Me Francis," Stapleton says.

The Judson Church group have had varied career paths since the heady days of the 1960s, but they have remained true to their ideas and ideals.

“This is how they can remain an inspiration for artists 50 years younger,” says Olwyn Grindley, a dancer who learned Rainer’s Trio A when she visited Limerick in 2001. A postmodern classic (Grindley subsequently performed it with Daghdha Dance Company), it remains Rainer’s most popular work and she will teach sections of it in a workshop during the Dublin Dance Festival. But its popularity has presented Rainer with one small problem.

“There’s a very sloppy performance by me that keeps appearing on YouTube,” she says. “I’ve tried to take it off but it just keeps popping up again.”

Currently a Distinguished Professor of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine, Rainer remains modest about her widespread influence, but mentions choreographers such as Jérôme Bel, Xavier le Roy and Sally Silvers (who will perform Rainer’s work in Dublin) among those in which she sees a certain lineage.

For Laurie Uprichard, artistic director of Dublin Dance Festival, the secret of Rainer’s popularity amongst younger choreographers is found in her own dances.

“She’s one of several choreographers who are in their 70s that still have a young artistic voice,” she says. “She is still iconoclastic, still playing games and still questioning what is possible.”

Yvonne Rainer's RoS Indexicaland Spiraling Downwill be performed on May 11 and 12 at Project Arts Centre. She will also teach parts of Trio Aat a masterclass in Dancehouse on May 12.

More information at dublindancefestival.ie