Sunday October 4,2009 7:30 PM
Q&A follows with Yvonne Rainer and DCW's Director Lynette Kessler.

Dance Camera West with LA Filmforum
Presenting Five Easy Pieces: A compilation of five body-based early short films made between 1966 to 1969; including: Hand Movie, Volleyball (Foot Film), Rhode Island Red, Trio Film, and Line.  Also presenting After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid; combining a dance performance choreographed for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project in 2000 with text by four radical artists who emerged from Vienna.

Five Easy Pieces: A compilation of five early short films made between 1966 to 1969.

Hand Movie (1966, 5:00, b&w, silent, 8mm to video)
Close-up of a hand, the fingers of which enact a sensuous dance.
Camerawork by William Davis.

Volleyball (Foot Film) (1967, 10:00 b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
A volleyball is rolled into the frame and comes to rest. Two legs in sneakers, seen from the knees down, enter the frame and stand beside it. Cut to new angle, same characters and actions.
Camerawork by Bud Wirtschafter.

Rhode Island Red (1968, 10:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
Ten minutes in an enormous chicken coop.
Camerawork by Roy Levin.

Trio Film (1968, 13:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
Two nudes, a man and a woman, interact with each other and a large balloon in a white living room. Performed by Steve Paxton and Becky Arnold.
Camerawork by Phill Niblock.

Line (1969, 10:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
A blond woman (Susan Marshall) in white pants and shirt interacts with a moving round object and the camera.
Camerawork by Phill Niblock.

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002, 31 min, video)
Yvonne Rainer combines a dance performance she choreographed for Mikhail Barryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project in 2000 with texts by Oscar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ludwig Wittgenstein—four of the most radical innovators in painting, architecture, music, and philosophy to emerge from fin-de-siècle Vienna. The dance contains, along with a variety of movement configurations, spoken lines derived from famous and unknown people's deathbed utterances. Charles Atlas and Natsuko Inue videotaped the rehearsals of the dance. The idea for integrating some of this footage with the Vienna material came partly from the title, which both elegaically and ironically invokes a passage through time and the end of a way of life, or, more to the point, aristocratic life. Thus the passage of Baryshnikov himself is also implicated—from danseur noble roles in classical ballet to his current interests in postmodern dance.

"Beyond the resonance of the title, however, the 21st century dance footage (itself containing 40-year-old instances of my 20th century choreography) can be read multifariously—and paradoxically—as both the beneficiary of a cultural and economic elite and as an extension of an avant-garde tradition that revels in attacking that elite and its illusions of order and permanency. Or, finally, each dance image can be taken simply as a graphic or mimetic correlation with its simultaneous text. "Some may say the avant-garde has long been over. Be that as it may, the idea of it continues to inspire and motivate many of us with its inducement—in the words of playwright/director Richard Foreman—to “resist the present.'"
—Yvonne Rainer

Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian
6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas, Los Angeles

FREE Dance Camera West and Filmforum members

$10 General Admission, $6 Student/Seniors
Tickets will be sold at the door, box office will open at 6:30 PM
Reservations can be made by emailing: lafilmforum@yahoo.com
Reservations will be held until 7:15 PM
For tickets visit LA Filmforum table in the courtyard night of event.
For more information