Yvonne Rainer's Trio A Turns 60, and Tate Modern Is Watching

Yvonne Rainer's Trio A, widely regarded as the work that heralded the start of the postmodern dance movement, turns 60 this year. London's Tate Modern will mark the anniversary with free, durational performances and discussions from July 10–11.

"Of course I'm surprised and very appreciative of all the attention," Rainer, 91, said on a recent call from her home in New York City.

The solo premiered in 1966 and challenged dance convention head-on. Rainer discarded music and narrative in favor of seemingly pedestrian motions—toe taps, limbs folding and unrolling—that never repeat. Performers must maintain what Rainer describes as an "uninflected continuity" and never make eye contact with the audience. By giving all movements equal emphasis, dancers achieve a look of "weighted ease," according to Pat Catterson, a certified transmitter of Trio A based in Boston and New York City.

"It's not that she was erasing something, just proposing something we hadn't seen before," says Sara Wookey, a certified transmitter of the work who will help stage the Tate performances. "There's a built-in, democratic value system that I'm very drawn to," she adds, noting that Rainer has always been a socially and politically engaged artist.

The work's democratic pull was evident from the start. When Catterson first saw Trio A at New York City's Billy Rose Theatre in 1969, three audience members climbed onto the stage and attempted to perform it themselves. "The Vietnam War draft had been such a leveler, and there was an egalitarian impulse in the culture," she says. "It was of our time. You wanted to do [Trio A], because you felt it was yours."

Pedestrian or Persnickety?

Dancing Trio A is harder than it looks. "Even those I've authorized to teach it come back every now and then for a tune-up from me," Rainer says.

"The first hard thing is remembering it, because it's one distinct, odd movement after another," says Catterson. The absence of dynamic changes creates its own demands. "You're controlling your weight against gravity," Wookey adds. "You can't speed up while going down to the floor or leaping in the air. That takes a lot of muscular effort."

Despite the difficulty—and Rainer's self-described "persnicketiness" about its details—the solo has been performed over the decades by dancers and nondancers alike. Rainer has granted permission for various adaptations. "There are all these variations, including me doing it at an older age in tap shoes," she says. "It's been done for people in wheelchairs, for plants in a scientific experiment in Chicago…"

Catterson taught herself to perform Trio A backwards for a 1970 performance at New York City's Judson Church. Dancing alongside Rainer, Barbara Lloyd, Steve Paxton, Douglas Dunn, and David Gordon, she wore nothing but the American flag to protest the Vietnam War. Concentrating on the choreography in reverse, she says, helped distract her from performing nude.

"I've never seen a dance like that," says Rainer. "The reverse is even more extraordinary than my original."

The Trick to Transmission

For the Tate celebration, Wookey is teaching Trio A to 15 professionals, ages 30 to 67, from a variety of backgrounds. The event will also feature the first-ever audio description of the solo.

When she teaches, Wookey shares anecdotes about Rainer so dancers learn about the person behind the piece, along with context about the solo's social and historical relevance. She also borrows Rainer's idiosyncratic language to explain movements. Rainer describes the piece's opening as your arms swinging like rocks on the end of a string.

"I think she's trying to get at the actual weight of the arms, the physics and mechanics of it," says Wookey. That detail cannot be learned from the 1978 video of Rainer performing the solo. "I try to prevent people from learning it from that video because I was no longer at my apex in terms of dancing," Rainer says.

"It goes on…"

What will the next 60 years of Trio A look like? "Well, I'll be gone," Rainer says frankly, recognizing that "things do not stay pure forever." According to Wookey, Rainer has often said that the work's defining feature of uninflected continuity will "probably disintegrate in the future at some point."

Catterson has faith in the solo's enduring appeal. "Dancing Trio A is kind of addictive," she says. "You keep trying to do the tasks and you never can do it perfectly. It keeps nagging at you to try again." Or, in the phrase Rainer repeated throughout the interview: "It goes on."