Here is the first film from avant garde film-maker Yvonne Rainer, showing as part of a retrospective of her work at the ICA in London, affording viewers a chance to appreciate the wonky, wonderful weirdness that was integral to the New York experimental art scene in the early 1970s. Aptly enough for an artist who started her career in the dance world (having studied with such luminaries as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham), Rainer grounds this in the world of dance, opening with a rehearsal of a company running through different moves. Don’t be alarmed if no sound is coming through – it’s meant to be that way. Rainer plays throughout with audience expectations and need for narrative closure, offering little titbits of story and then whipping them away from us in juddering ruptures with convention.
