Yvonne Rainer in-person
Presented in collaboration with the San Francisco Art Institute Graduate Division, Spheres of Interest: Experiments in Thinking & Action, the graduate lecture series, directed by Renée Green, Dean of Graduate Studies
“Who else could spin hot flashes, Lenny Bruce, Carmen Miranda and [Eldridge Cleaver’s] Soul on Ice into such a pungent brew?” (The Village Voice)
In Privilege, Rainer takes on the rarely explored subject of menopause and constructs a fascinating, witty and complex social critique of empowerment and class while delving into issues of age, sexuality and race. Rainer plays with narrative conventions and simultaneously disrupts notions of continuity and identity, weaving the emotional and fictive realms of melodrama, documentary, text and archival imagery into a richly textured and compelling work. (Vanessa O’Neill)
Distinguished Professor in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine, Yvonne Rainer began her career as a dancer and choreographer in the 1950s. In the early ‘70s, after nearly twenty years working in modern dance, she turned her attentions to filmmaking. Over the subsequent twenty-five years, she made seven experimental feature films, including Lives of Performers, The Man Who Envied Women and MURDER and murder. Encouraged by a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, she returned to choreography in 2000 for the White Oak Dance Project. Recent work includes choreography on AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M. (a revision of Balanchine’s Agon), RoS Indexical (a revision of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring) and Spiraling Down (a meditation on soccer, aging and war), as well as a video installation for a traveling solo gallery exhibition comprising dance and texts that touch on art and politics in fin-desiecle Vienna. Rainer published a memoir, Feelings Are Facts: A Life, in 2006.