Yvonne Rainer Reconstructs 1965 Dance at Performa 19 in New York

Performa 19, the eighth edition of the biennial of performance art, took place across multiple venues in New York City throughout November 2019. The edition celebrated the centenary of the Bauhaus, the first school to integrate theater workshops into its curriculum, and explored the intersection of art and technology. Among the 19 commissioned artists was Yvonne Rainer, a founder of the Judson Dance Theater and pioneer of postmodern performance. She directed a reconstruction of her 1965 piece "Part of Some Sextets" at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, co-directed with Emily Coates. The original work featured twelve mattresses and ten performers including Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, and Rainer herself, executing 31 movement possibilities that changed every 30 seconds. The reconstruction required five weeks of archival research, including the discovery of a quarter-inch tape at the Rauschenberg Foundation. Coates researched Rainer's archive at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The performance incorporated a voiceover reading from the diary of William Bentley (1905), describing daily life in a Unitarian community in Salem, Massachusetts. Some movements were revised, and new audio recordings were added, with Rainer noting that certain edits to the original narration reflect contemporary political concerns. The piece raises questions about performance reconstruction, historical recontextualization, and the role of archives.