Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934, San Francisco) is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental.
Rainer was born in San Francisco to parents who considered themselves radicals. As a child, she was sent to live at a boarding institution for several years. In 1957, she moved to New York to study theater. Rainer was drawn to modern dance, and began studying at the M...
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Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934, San Francisco) is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental.
Rainer was born in San Francisco to parents who considered themselves radicals. As a child, she was sent to live at a boarding institution for several years. In 1957, she moved to New York to study theater. Rainer was drawn to modern dance, and began studying at the Martha Graham School and later with James Waring and Merce Cunningham.
Rainer was one of the organizers of the Judson Dance Theater, a focal point for vanguard activity in the dance world throughout the 1960s, and she formed her own company for a brief time after the Judson performances ended. Rainer is noted for an approach to dance that treats the body more as the source of an infinite variety of movements than as the purveyor of emotion or drama. Many of the elements she employed—such as repetition, patterning, tasks, and games—later became...
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