“AS NIGHTFALL DOES NOT COME ALL AT ONCE…" (@ The Brooklyn Rail)

Here is a little review I wrote about Yvonne Rainer's performances at the Baryshnikov Art Center last month. Hopefully a sketch for a more extensive offering about Rainer's work (I had too much to say, and too small a word count).

"During much of the piece the dancers flock, proceeding around the dance studio in a rectangular formation, walking with their hands out as though about to receive a manicure. Periodically a dancer will call out a command—“toast” or “freak-out”—and the pack will respond in unison. Other times a dancer will break off from the group, soloing or reciting a text. As in Spiraling Down, Assisted Living: Good Sports 2 is structured through a series of passages by disparate writers and thinkers, including Lydia Davis, William James, and Rosalyn Deutsch. Many of these passages, which indicate the breadth of Rainer’s reading, are of a political nature, especially the recitation that closes the performance, which imagines political despair as a pair of eyes adjusting to the dark. They play off of the choreography itself, creating various frictions."