Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer

The goal of art is to push you out of your comfort zone and American choreographer and director Yvonne Rainer purposefully shore viewers of their complacency throughout her 50 years of creative work. Along with members of New York's Judson Dance Theater she revolutionized modern dance in the 1960s. The artists introduced street clothes onto the stage, moves inspired by daily activities and the scream as a form of expression. The feminist movement inspired her performances and her films in the 1970s; in each she returned to themes of political violence or female stereotypes in Hollywood films. She literally put theory into motion. At her current 80 years of age, Rainer continues to work as a choreographer looking for ways the body can resist the normative and conformism in the tradition of dance and American society. This documentary by Jack Walsh is a classic biography of one of the most important postwar artists who is listed among greats such as Lucinda Childs or Carolee Schneemann. The penetrating portrait includes archive materials, fragments of Rainer's films, interviews with academics and numerous pictures from her family photography archive.