INFLUENCER ANALYSIS

How Rainer and Finley's Work is Relevant to My Own

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Rainer

Yvonne Rainer, influenced by her feminist ideals, often experimented with how the audience might view a work. In 1966 Rainer created Trio A which served to push some of her boundaries. It was performed in a fairly traditional theatre setting. It featured an almost hypnotic, rhythmic movement vocabulary, which served to challenge the themes of modern dance practice at the time. It was performed in silence, aside from sounds made by the body. Another thing of note was the lack of eye contact from the dancer. When the dancer faced the audience, she would have her eyes closed or her head would be otherwise involved in movement that deflected eye contact. This was Rainer’s first attempt at combating the male gaze in her work. In 1972 Rainer turned to filmmaking. I believe she found this to be a more effective medium for curtailing the male gaze. She created works featuring women in different contexts. 

In Rainer’s Film About A Woman Who... there is a shot of a woman being undressed directly in front of the camera. In an interview Rainer said the following: “I was astounded, because I have never thought of myself as depriving anyone of pleasure, unless a shot or sequence had a specific political agenda, like the tracking shot into the nude in Film About a Woman Who.... There was a specific mission there. It was an arduous experience for the audience to stay with that shot: no one could derive pleasure from that image of the woman’s body” (Rainer, interviewed by Macdonald 1991, p. 26).  

Here we can see how this shot affected the audience’s experience. The viewer was unable to look away because of the intriguing nature of the shot, perhaps waiting for something satisfying to occur, but were unable to enjoy the nudity of the woman. She was forcing the viewer to reconsider their perceptions on the purpose of the female body. 

Rainer also created a film where the female protagonist is completely absent from screen; she is only present through her voice. This leaves space for the audience to create their own visualisation of the protagonist. This would allow them to perhaps feel more emotionally connected to the character, rather than sexually attracted to her. 

I found Rainer’s methods intriguing, particularly when considering how I might implement these methods in my own work. I began to wonder about how I might create an unseen character in a live dance work. I also speculated on how I might deny the audience of that satisfaction, and if that was something that would be admissible in my work.