Everyday Activist - Feelings are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer

Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 04:00 PM

Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

In my last post about the documentary, Rare Birds, I talked a lot about Alexander Ekman's talent as a dancer and choreographer. The person who helped create the way for modern dance and personal expression is Yvonne Rainer. Feelings are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer takes the audience on a journey across several decades of her life. From these glimpses, we understand what dance was like in mid 1900s and how far it has come in one person's lifetime. Modern dance has so many interpretations and complexities as modern art, but before we could access the plethora of forms, someone had to be first to challenge the norms of the times.

Yvonne Rainer didn`t have a conventional upbringing or post secondary education, which played in her favor. She dropped out of college in California to head for the east coast, where the New York art scene boomed. Her original idea was to become an actor. Luckily for dance that didn`t work out.Among Yvonne`s short comings (or advantages) was that she lacked the body of a classical dancer, therefore if she wanted to dance it would have to be on her terms. Before creating her own choreography, she trained with the famous Martha Graham school. At that time, Martha Graham set the standard for modern dance, causing Yvonne to label her personal form as post modern. Yvonne used dance to depict everyday themes rather than complex stories told with elaborate sets and costumes.

This biopic had support from a crowdfunding campaign and the screenplay was based off of a book called Feelings are Facts. I appreciate how alternate ways of financing films allows us as a culture to have access artists who had a serious impact on society. While we often don't know their names we subconsciously recognize their contributions. Even for the artists themselves this type of funding allows them to continue to create in a different medium. In the movie, Yvonne talks about how she left dance for film making and ended up back in dance because she didn't think she would get anymore grants for her films. They were different and viewer discretion is advised. You have to wonder, though if she could have crowdfunded to raise money, would she have gone back to dance. Mind you if Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous ballet dancer, asked for a piece of choreography, I wouldn`t have the heart to turn him down!

Even in her eighties she`s a busy lady. Last year she preimered a new dance, The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there's nothing left to move? at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Feelings are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer will be at the Globe Cinema on Saturday February 20th, 2016 at 7 pm. The evening also contains 3 short films and the documentary, Rare Birds.

Calgary Showtimes: CUFF: Dance on Film >