Dance history, forms, and cultural significance

Dance

Yvonne Rainer's Trio A

Yvonne Rainer is often considered one of the most influential dancers and choreographers of the second half of the twentieth century. Her piece Trio A, which is really part of a larger piece entitled The Mind is a Muscle, is one of her most famous works, and it continues to be performed today in many variations. In many ways, the dance itself and the propagation of it amongst others choreographers and the dance world at large embodies Rainer's feelings and attitudes towards dance and life in general. Though these feelings are not exactly simple to identify, there are clear themes to her works which are handily elucidated by both her writings and some of her biographical details, specifically those which speak to her career as dancer, choreographer, and film maker.

In all areas, Rainer generally eschewed the traditional concepts of narrative and climax, and Trio A is a clear example of this. This could be seen as quite strange given her initial desires regarding the idea of performance art. Born in 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, Rainer also grew up during World War II, and these two events led to a massive change in artistic styles and social development in the United States (Richar 2003). Following World War II, the Cold War stand off between the United States and the Soviet Union also became a major influence on society and artistic expression (Rainer 1999). Rainer was excited by what she saw, and her artistic desires grew during her teenage years. By her early twenties Yvonne Rainer had left her hometown of San Francisco to travel across the country in pursuit of a career as a performer, at first as an actor.

In 1957, Yvonne Rainer moved to New York City, drawn to the idea of theatre and performance. She quickly moved away from the acting world that she was initially drawn to, however, and began studying modern dance first with the Martha Graham Company and then with Merce Cunningham. She began developing Trio A a mere eight years after beginning her dancing career, and the simplicity of the movements that she patterned together in the piece are indicative of her generally accessible and exploratory style (Rainer 1999).

Trio A was first performed as part of a larger piece called The Mind is a Muscle. In a statement accompanying the piece's first full performance in 1966, Yvonne Rainer said, "It is my overall concern to reveal people as they are engaged in various kinds of activities -- alone, with each other, with objects -- and to weight the quality of the human body towards that of objects and away from the super-stylization of the dancer" (qtd. In MIT Press 2009). This lack of stylization is typical of her work, and Trio A is an early example.

It is also one of the most enduring of Yvonne Rainer's pieces. The 1968 performance actually occurred as a trio -- the piece was danced by David Gordon, Steve Paxton, and Rainer herself -- but it has been adapted many times for larger groups and solo performances (Rainer 2004). Many choreographers and companies have used the work both in professional settings and with untrained dancers, often as part of political protests or other demonstrations, largely because of the way it disrupts the modern conventions of dance.

Ultimately, though Trio A has stood alone as Yvonne Rainer's most famous dance for most of her career, it is far from just a one-off. In fact, it is not a strictly choreographed piece, but rather is built on a system of rules and specified but unpredictable movements, making the dance something of a game with the audience (Rainer 1999). This is even more true when the number of dancers in the piece is increased, where the dancers sometimes interact with or at least respond to each other causing new formations and movements (Rainer 1999). This is less apparent in the 1978 video Rainer made of herself dancing Trio A alone, bit the idea of avoiding contact with the audience via the gaze is very apparent (Rainer & Barnes 1978).

Like much of the work occurring in modern dance during the period, Trio A was developed in new York City, where Yvonne Rainer continued to work and live. Specifically, Yvonne Rainer developed the piece at the Judson Church (alternatively called the Judson Dance Theatre), which Rainer is credited with co-founding (Rainer 2004; Richar 2003). There was a heavy influence on the piece by Rainer's study with Martha Graham, although by 1965 when Rainer began developing Trio A she had already partially rejected some of Martha Graham's concepts and beliefs concerning dance, especially when it came to the specific movements and the idea of a through-line and/or climax (Rainer 1999). Later, Rainer somewhat ruefully retracted some of her comments about Graham, but still stands by Trio A (Rainer 1999).

Trio A has been performed by many choreographers, companies, and dancers over the four decades of its existence. Even during its creative phase, when the piece was still being developed and integrated into The Mind is a Muscle, Rainer and the other dancers she was working with continued to adjust the piece, and the finalized performance of The Mind is a Muscle contained several iterations of the piece including a solo "balletic" [sic] version "with pirouettes and jumps" (Rainer 2004). The "final" version of the dance was also a solo performance, this time by Rainer herself wearing tap shoes in the Anderson Theatre in 1968 (Rainer 2004).

This "final" performance was far from the end of the road for Trio A, however. In the same year, the first untrained dancer to tackle the piece, Frances Brooks, performed it as part of a lecture/demonstration at the New York City Library if Performing Arts. 1970 saw the return of the original dancers, joined by several others, to the Judson Church to perform the piece again. This time, however, the dancers were entirely nude except for American flags that were tied around their necks. This was part of a protest against laws that had to do with the desecration, which were themselves a reaction by the government and supporters of the government's actions and policies against many of the Vietnam protestors (Rainer 2004).

This truly highlights the backdrop against which Trio A was created. The Cold War had become quite hot in several parts of the world, especially Vietnam. As society was in many ways being deconstructed, so was the idea of the body and the individual. In many ways, Trio A is about a deconstruction -- or a reappraisal -- of the human body. Rainer felt that narrative gave a false view of the world, and her piece explores this (Rainer 1999).

Even after the Vietnam War finally ended, and a sort of peace was largely restored both abroad and domestically, Trio A continued to appear revolutionary and remained quite relevant. One of the most famous performances occurred in the 1970s, when Michael Fajans, who himself learned the dance from Barbara Dilley (who had learned it from the choreographer), taught the dance to fifty students at Antioch College who performed it to the song "In the Midnight Hour" though the piece originally required no music at all (Rainer 2004). In addition, the nude/flag version was revived several times since it was performed in that manner, by different groups at different times and for very different reasons (Rainer 2004).

Just as the number of performers and the methods of performance have changed, the timing of the piece is also very much open to each individual performer's preference. In 1972, Steve Paxton (one of the original dancers of the piece) gave an hour-long rendition of the piece in Rome (Rainer 2004). Different dancers with slightly different interpretations of the piece have often performed together as a longer dance event than one solo rendition would have been. The availability of the piece to people of all (or no) dance abilities and its adaptability has kept the piece fresh despite the many performances it has seen.

Rainer set aside performing in 1973, but found herself performing many times thereafter nonetheless. One of the most common pieces she performed as she aged was her famous Trio A. Given the importance of this dance in her repertoire, this is hardly a surprising fact.

Given Rainer's rejection of narrative, climax, and even specific focus within a dance -- all of which she feels are artificial limitations on the body and its movements -- it should not be surprising that there is no story or even a specific emotion or ideal being expressed in Trio A. The dance really is an exploration of the body's movements, with certain consciously recognized and established "rules" that do not control the movements, exactly, but which dictate the shifts in the pattern of movements. Much of the dance appears simplistic and even rigidly controlled, but there is also an ease and a softness to Rainer's body that gives the dance a false sense of freedom (Rainer & Barnes 1978). Strangely, the sense of freedom is observable even as the viewer consciously recognizes that it is not really present in the dance. Rainer's complete and continued avoidance of the camera's gaze mimics the original relationship between the dancers of Trio A and the audience, and the feeling it gives is one of avoidance due to oppression rather than the dancer's choice.

In many ways, this sort of controlled freedom can be seen as representative of the human condition at large, and this is one possible interpretation of Trio A (MIT Press 2009). Especially in the United States and other Western countries, the idea of freedom is often spoken of as a protected ideal, but this freedom is in fact illusory. There are limitations pressed upon us by society that actually severely limit our freedom, and many of these work in ways that are subconscious. That is, we might not even be aware of the restrictions placed upon us, but we perform the "dance" in our daily lives regardless of our ignorance.