A legendary choreographer's personal and practical guide to the art of dance-making

 

Yvonne Rainer was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, a 1960s New York artists' collective that championed ordinary, spare movements and spontaneity. Rainer's decades of creativity--in dance and in filmmaking--have inspired generations of avant-garde, political, and feminist choreographers. Her many works include the iconic dance Trio A and the film Hand Movie.

 

In this book, Rainer dancer and choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon helps Rainer gather teaching notes from her dance classes and workshops, passages from her creative journals, and her newer thoughts on movement and art, opening a window on to the life's work of a transformative artist. With fifty prompts for improvisational movement ("39. Travel a long distance as fast as you can while making regular changes in your means of locomotion"), sly illustrations by Pascal Lemaître, and an illuminating interview with Phuon, this workbook makes Rainer's friendly, humorous, and down&-to-earth creative practice available to everyone. Because, as Rainer says, if you can move, you are a dancer.