Book Review - Feelings Are Facts by Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer, the dancer and filmmaker accredited with organising the revolutionary Judson Dance Theatre and Grand Union, has written a frank and humorous memoir in Feelings Are Facts. Not only a personal and artistic record, included throughout are excerpts from film scripts, program notes, diary entries, personal letters and photographs. All provide great insight not only into the autobiographical content of her film work (Rainer frequently describes a personal experience and then inserts the script of its fictionalisation in film), but into a life that was born for anarchy. Her parents and older brother were anarchists, making her pushing of boundaries (specifically in dance) inevitable. Rainer openly discusses every aspect of her life, from how she was not at the ‘head’ of either of the two dance collectives she is famously associated with, to her personal relationships and ‘about turning from dance to film and back to dance.’[i]

Having said this, Feelings Are Facts is primarily an account of Rainer’s personal life, and some of the letters and diary entries are long and emotionally difficult, especially those leading up to her attempted suicide. But on a lighter note (do not be dismayed, there are a few of those) the chapters in which she describes her work with the Judson Dance Theatre are a fascinating and informative eye witness account of the history of the group. Rainer includes invaluable information and images, particularly the flyer from the first concert of dance on July 6th 1962 and an account of the work performed in this concert. Disappointingly, only her first film venture Lives of the Performers is talked about in detail, the rest becoming part of the Epilogue that summarises the latter part of her life.

Aside from her artistic endeavours and the dramas of her emotional life, Rainer’s open discussion of her sexual misadventures, recreational drug taking and the parties of the New York artistic social circle is not sensationalised for effect and therefore is an important cultural record of life in the 60s and 70s.

Feelings Are Facts is focused on Rainer’s emotional struggle and inner demons, but the intertwining personal, social, cultural and artistic record is invaluable, and written with honesty, humility and humour.
[i] Rainer, Yvonne (2006) Feelings Are Facts MIT Press; London (Book Flap)