Artist
Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer, a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature films  — Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), MURDER and murder (1996), among others — she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation for the White Oak Dance Project (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan). Her dances since then include AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M.RoS Indexical, a Performa07 commission, Spiraling Down, Assisted Living: Good Sports 2, and Assisted Living: Do You Have Any Money? Her dances and films have been shown world wide, and her work has been rewarded with museum exhibitions, fellowships, and grants, most notably two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller grants, a Wexner Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and retrospective exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2012), the Getty Research Institute, L.A. and Raven Row, London (2014). A memoir — Feelings Are Facts: a Life — was published by MIT Press in 2006. A selection of her poetry was published in 2011 by Paul Chan’s Badlands Unlimited.

Performance
Transmitting Trio A (1966) with Sara Wookey

Project curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre

Workshop partners: Dancemakers & Public Recordings
Performance venue partner: AGO
Gallery partner: Gallery TPW

PERFORMERS:
Aleesa Cohene
Ame Henderson
Andrea Nann
Francesco Gagliardi
Jon McCurley
Margaret Dragu
Martin Bélanger
Mikiki
Robert Abubo
Shannon Cochrane
Simon Rabyniuk
Sara Wookey

The Project: TRANSMITTING TRIO A (1966)
Over the course of a 5-day intensive workshop led by Sara Wookey — one of the few dancers authorized by Yvonne Rainer to “transmit” (to use Rainer’s own phrase) her works — a mixed group of dance and performance artists will learn several of Rainer’s dance works, focusing primarily on Trio A (1966). 

Consisting of a 4½ minute sequence of movements that progress without repetition, phrasing, or emphasis and performed without musical accompaniment, Trio A (1966) is largely considered to be one of the originative works of the postmodern dance movement, as well one of the most influential works in the canon of 20th century dance. Rainer’s interest in task-based movement, the ephemeral, the un-spectacular, and rethinking the performer-audience relationship are characteristic concerns of both contemporary dance artists and performance artists.

The starting point for this project is the shared conversation between dance and performance artists around the distinctions between repertoire and reenactment, in particular consideration of how these modes of archiving in live art relate to the increasing interest in presenting performance art and choreography in the museum.

The results of the project are a series of presentations of Trio A (and other works in the Rainer repertoire) in a variety of contexts: a dance studio, a gallery, and a museum; as an open rehearsal, a single iteration, and a rotating relay.

FADO’s Transmitting Trio A (1966) project overlaps with Yvonne Rainer’s visit to Toronto where she will deliver an artist talk (Saturday March 21, 7:00pm) entitled Where’s the Passion? in the context of the AGO’s Radical Acts Unconference taking place on March 21. In addition, there are other activations to experience: Sara Wookey will be giving a lecture demonstration about Trio A and Gallery TPW presents a discursive series (March 20–28) curated by Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon. Entitled, “…a container for mere possibilities that have not yet happened, a body in a state of becoming through time, or a structure for the expression of time as it moves both forwards and backwards at once.” the series responds to and thinks alongside the performances initiated by FADO, allowing the opportunity to see Rainer’s dance again within a constellation of conversations, readings and newly commissioned work.

THANK YOU. This project is possible because of the generous support of Dancemakers (Ben Kamino and Emi Forster) in making the workshop possible. Warm thanks to Public Recordings (Ame Henderson) in conceptualizing the project and helping to assemble the group. Thanks to the AGO (Kathleen McLean and Paola Poletto) for inviting this project into their activities. Thanks to the contribution of Gallery TPW as main host venue, and to curators Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon for their keen thinking in organizing a series of discursive events in response to the project’s proposal.

SCHEDULE
Dance is Hard to See: Capturing and Transmitting Movement through Language, Media and Muscle Memory, a lecture demonstration by Sara Wookey
March 19, 7:30pm @ Dancemakers, Distillery District, 15 Case Goods Lane

Performance of Trio A (1966) by Sara Wookey
March 24, 7:00pm @ Gallery TPW

Open rehearsals of Trio A (1966)
March 22, 4:00–5:00pm @ Dancemakers
March 25, 7:00-8:00pm @ AGO, 317 Dundas Street West
March 28, 12:00-5:00pm @ Gallery TPW, 170 St. Helens Avenue

Above: Trio A rehearsal with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.
Below: Trio A dinner with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer