Yvonne Rainer is the iconoclastic choreographer who, beginning in the 60s, pioneered the deconstruction of modern dance in a manner closely associated with minimalist art. No Manifesto, published in 1965 (“No to spectacle. No to virtuosity. No to transformations and magic and make-believe … no to moving or being moved”) announced a rejection of modern dance’s conventions and cliches, in favour of a vocabulary of movement that prioritised the ordinary, alienating or plain over narrative structure and emotional projection. She turned to film-making when she felt that dance alone couldn’t express what she wanted to say, and produced more than a dozen uncompromising film works over three decades.
“Oh no,” says Rainer, 88, when I bring up No Manifesto, which she later disavowed, during our conversation at her Manhattan apartment. “That was a certain point in art history – the manifesto was a way of asserting yourself publicly. I never meant it to be a doctrine that would govern my decisions.” She moved on from it “almost immediately”.
