Nanako Nakajima in Conversation with Yvonne Rainer

Abstract

‘Nanako Nakajima in Conversation with Yvonne Rainer’ was the document used during the lecture-conversation event that was held on 28 January 2019. Nakajima's innovative project ‘Performative Exhibition of Yvonne Rainer's Work’ was held at the Kyoto Art Theater (Shunjuza) from 11 - 15 October 2017 in collaboration with the postmodern choreographer and filmmaker, Yvonne Rainer, a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York. Nakajima examines how various dramaturgies related to ageing and dance were interwoven into this exhibition in order to go beyond the typical dance presentation in a museum. Moreover, to reverse the current ‘dancing museum’ trend, this project revived the postmodern works of Rainer and combined their dramaturgical qualities with those of the traditional Japanese theatre for the purpose of connecting the past with the present. Nakajima explained her attempt to utilise archival materials to represent the postmodern oeuvre to the audience in Kyoto. She reconstructed stage sets and props of Rainer's legendary piece to demonstrate the working process on stage. Professional dancers of different ages and with varied training backgrounds were also employed to re-perform Rainer's seminal work of Trio A, including a Noh performer in his 80s. Inspired by the Noh performer in Trio A and Yvonne Rainer's Trio A Geriatric Version, Nakajima built up a dance dramaturgy and spectatorship of ageing, engaging with the premise of Trio A and the aesthetics of the Noh theatre. Nakajima's lecture was followed by a conversation with Yvonne Rainer, which revealed the condition and aesthetic prejudice of dancers regarding ageing in the American postmodern dance context that Rainer had been confronting. Rainer also discussed her private stories with the legends of American modern dance such as Ruth St Denis and Martha Graham by continuously returning to her own past and allowing her past to return to her.

Notes

1 In 2017, this research was conducted in the context of the joint research project of the Kyoto University of Art and Design and the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Performing Arts in Kyoto, Japan.

2 See the previous discussion with the case of Raimund Hoghe at the Shunjuza theatre (Nakajima 2018b).

3 Claire Bishop discusses pros and cons of this recent immigration of dance into white cubes. While choreographers gain diverse range of audience and accessibility, and integrate the work in terms of the context of its choreography by relocating the piece, only certain lineages of dance like the Judson and Cunningham are embraced by museums, and the museum eventually homogenizes our experience of dance, which she calls the Tino Sehgal effect (Bishop 2014). Bishop further analyzes this migration of dance from black box into white cubes as re-temporalization of performance from event time to exhibition time. Referring to the black box theatre that was ideologically established by Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook as a counter-action of cinema and television, she describes technology’s reshaping of our sensorium in the form of dance exhibition together with the birth of the smartphone (Bishop 2018).

4 Peggy Phelan describes Rainer’s work like this (1999: 14).

5 Regarding the spectatorship in Rainer’s works from a filmic perspective, refer to Carrie Lambert-Betty’s (2008) comprehensive research.

6 Hanamichi, which is translated as flower path, is an extra bridge-stage section used in Japanese Kabuki theatre. It is a long, raised platform that runs, left of centre, from the back of the theatre, through the audience, to connect with the main stage. And red lanterns with theatre emblems hang in the audience area. In the performative exhibition, most of the audience hesitates to step on the Hanamichi.

7 ‘No Manifesto’ goes like: ‘No to spectacle. No to virtuosity. No to transformations and magic and make-believe. … ’ ‘A Manifesto Reconsidered’ corresponds to the ‘No Manifesto’ as follows: ‘Avoid if at all possible. Acceptable in limited quantity. Magic is out; the other two are sometimes tolerable. … ’

8 For an evening of ‘Connecticut Composite’ (1969), including ‘Audience piece’, Rainer worked with eighty students in five separate performing areas in one building (Rainer 1974: 125–128).

9 Regarding Trio A, Sally Banes also explains, ‘the possibility is proposed that dance is neither perfection of technique nor of expression but quite something else – the presentation of objects in themselves’ (1987: 49). Banes also writes that ‘[Rainer] does not prize technique, beauty, of formal design. Thus [h]er idea of what dance’s medium might be is not physical technique plus beauty, but the unvarnished materiality and intelligence of the body’ (2003: 35).

10 Koji Takabayashi also mentions his seeing ability in the interview (Nakajima 2018a).

11 These are ancient Greek terms, not modern Greek. In the Liddell and Scott dictionary, under the term οʾ πι´σω, it is explained as ‘since the future is unseen and was therefore regarded as behind us, whereas the past is known and therefore before our eyes’ (Liddell, and Robert 1940).