LOS ANGELES, CA.- REDCAT is collaborating with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute to co-present two West Coast premieres, RoS Indexical (2007) and Spiraling Down (2008), from the avantgarde dance and film pioneer, Yvonne Rainer. The evening-length program opens Thursday, June 25, 2009 at REDCAT and runs for a limited engagement through Sunday, June 28, 2009.

"My return to performance in 2000, after a 25-five year career as a filmmaker, confirmed for me my true love: working with dancers and the immediacy of the physical and cerebral demands of choreography. The two West Coast premieresat REDCAT reveal two different aspects of my current work: dance history (RoS Indexical) and a kind of melancholic pedagogical vaudeville (Spiraling Down)," says Yvonne Rainer when asked about the upcoming performances at REDCAT.

The New York Times calls Rainer "an avant-garde giant" whose "humor is boundless" in RoS Indexical, her radical re-vision of The Rite of Spring which premiered at Performa 07. Drawing on the brilliant and controversial Stravinsky/Nijinsky ballet that scandalized Paris audiences in 1913 with its "primitive" movement and dissonant score, Rainer choreographs RoS Indexical for a quartet of female dancers. "Since making that first dance for Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, I have worked with the same four dancers--Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Sally Silvers--all consummate professionals who demonstrate a wide range of sensibilities, ages, and technical backgrounds," says Rainer. Set to the soundtrack of "Riot at the Rite," the BBC reenactment of the raucous, chaotic opening night of the modernist landmark, "Rainer not only destabilizes the notion of The Rite of Spring as an iconic achievement in dance history, she allows us to see that a work may live on in greatly altered form," writes The Hudson Review.

The second half of the program is a new commission Spiraling Down which premiered at the Festival of International Dance at Yale in November of 2008. This work draws inspiration from a variety of sources—newspaper photos, soccer moves, old movies, classic modern dance, ballet, Steve Martin, 19th-century actress Sarah Bernhardt, and even Rainer's own disinterred dances from the 1960s. These materials and others, including spoken texts, come together to create a spectacularly original work with an eerie resonance that is both melancholic and unpredictable.

"These performances represent the culmination of the Getty's long-term commitment to Yvonne Rainer's work and are an especially appropriate way to celebrate the Getty Research Institute's recent acquisition of Rainer's archive," says Andrew Perchuk, the Getty Research Institute’s deputy director.

Spiraling Down was commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, and the World Performance Project at Yale. RoS Indexical is a PERFORMA Commission for PERFORMA 07 and Documenta.

Yvonne Rainer's RoS Indexical and Spiraling Down run June 25–28, 2009 at REDCAT. Performances take place Thursday–Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are $20–25, with student discounts available. Seating is general admission. Tickets and information at the REDCAT box office, 213-237-2800 or www.redcat.org.

REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, is located at the corner of W.2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012).

In conjunction with the performances, REDCAT and the Getty Research Institute will host conversations with Yvonne Rainer, her dancers and visiting scholars. Post-performance on Thursday, June 25, dance and theater scholar Roger Copeland speaks with dancers Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer and Sally Silvers, discussing the collaborative process of creating Rainer's works, and the experience of performing them, from the dancers' perspectives. Prior to the performance on Saturday, June 27, at 6:00 p.m., internationally-recognized curator, and Dean of the Yale School of Art, Robert Storr holds a conversation with Yvonne Rainer focusing on Rainer's enormous impact on postwar art, her engagement with multiple avant-garde art practices and their political and aesthetic possibilities. These events are free and open to the public.

Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling the REDCAT box office at 213-237-2800.

YVONNE RAINER
Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York from 1957 and began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, the genesis of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Some of her better known dances and theater pieces are Terrain (1963), The Mind is a Muscle (1968), Continuous Project-Altered Daily (1969-70), This is the story of a woman who... (1973), and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (2000), commissioned by the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation.

Since 1972 Rainer has completed seven feature-length films, beginning with Lives of Performers and more recently Privilege (1990), winner of the Filmmakers' Trophy at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, and the Geyer Werke Prize at the 1991 International Documentary Film Festival in Munich, and MURDER and murder (1996), winner of the Teddy Award at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival and Special Jury Award at the 1999 Miami Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Noteworthy for a wry humor and emotional candor brought to bear on the everyday intersections of private and public life, Rainer's films deal with a number of aesthetic and social issues, such as melodrama, menopause, racism, political violence, sexual identity, and notions of disease. Her films have been shown at major international film festivals. Her most recent book, A Woman Who...: Essays, Interviews, Scripts, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1999. In 2002 the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery in Philadelphia mounted an exhibition of Rainer's work consisting of video installations, film screenings, and dance photos and memorabilia.

Rainer is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and a MacArthur Fellowship.