Interview 'Feeling are Facts: "The Live of Yvonne Rainer"
Channel: TEDDY AWARD
Date: 2015-02-14

29. TEDDY AWARD, 65. Berlin International Film Festival 
Interview Jack Walsh (director), Christine Murray (producer)
Interview by Magnus Rosengarten
http://news.teddyaward.tv/en/video/?a-z=1&select=F&id_film=598

'Feelings are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer'
USA, 2015
Directed by Jack Walsh


In 1966, Yvonne Rainer changed the world of modern dance with her performance ‘Trio A’ by
analysing the repertoire of human movement in a radically unspectacular way. Influenced by Merce
Cunningham and John Cage, she developed socio-political choreographies in which she explored on
stage everyday movements in a way that deliberately thwarted audience expectations. Determined
not to appear biddable, she began experimenting with film – applying to the new medium the same
revolutionary impetus that was to be found in her body work. At the age of fifty-six she came out as a
lesbian, and in 1997 she won the Teddy Award with MURDER and murder.Making abundant use of
film excerpts, archive footage and reinterpretations of Rainer’s choreographies, director Jack Walsh
succeeds in illustrating the artistic development of an unswerving yet likeable avant-gardist – from the
1950s to the present day. Complementing Rainer’s own recollections are contributions from dance
experts and fellow-travellers such as Carolee Schneeman and B. Ruby Rich. Today, aged 80, she is
still working on the stage, after Mikhail Baryshnikov persuaded her to make a belated comeback as a
choreographer in the year 2000.