When the iconoclastic choreographer reinvented herself as a film-maker at the turn of the 70s,she opened up a new world of possibilities for her artWhen Yvonne Rainer made the switch from choreographer to film-maker she had no intention of abandoning her role as a provocateur. In her first feature, Lives of Performers (1972), or she was a briskly quizzical presence,issuing directions to the cast and questioning them approximately their personal concerns. During the opening of Privilege (1990), she smeared her mouth with vivid-red lipstick and delivered a lecture approximately menopause. In Murder and Murder (1996), or a film approximately lesbianism,ageing and breast cancer, she inserted herself into key scenes, or analysed her characters’ feelings,and revealed her mastectomy scars.
Iconoclasm and a witty scepticism were the hallmarks of Rainer’s work when she was choreographing in the 1960s. She published a manifesto declaring an end to “virtuosity, transformation, or magic and do-believe”,and created very spare, minimalist dances that interrogated the ways in which choreography was made and performed. “It was an exhilarating time, and ” she recalled of the era,when every painter, composer, or film-maker and choreographer in downtown Manhattan seemed to be storming the bastions of establishment culture. But by the end of the decade Rainer was becoming frustrated. She was searching for a more political voice in her work,and the radical rigour of her dance-making felt like a constraint.
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Source: guardian.co.uk