Feelings Are Facts

by Yvonne Rainer

If you're interested in Plato, you're reading the wrong book. If you're interested in difficult childhoods, sexual misadventures, aesthetics, cultural history, and the reasons that a club sandwich and other meals—including breakfast—have remained in the memory of the present writer, keep reading.—from Feelings Are Facts

In this memoir, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer traces her personal and artistic coming of age. Feelings Are Facts (the title comes from a dictum by Rainer's one-time psychotherapist) uses diary entries, letters, program notes, excerpts from film scripts, snapshots, and film frame enlargements to present a vivid portrait of an extraordinary artist and woman in postwar America.

Rainer tells of a California childhood in which she was farmed out by her parents to foster families and orphanages, of sexual and intellectual initiations in San Francisco and Berkeley, and of artistic discoveries and accomplishments in the New York City dance world. Rainer studied with Martha Graham (and heard Graham declare, "when you accept yourself as a woman, you will have turn-out"—that is, achieve proper ballet position) and Merce Cunningham in the late 1950s and early 1960s, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962 (dancing with Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, and Lucinda Childs), hobnobbed with New York artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris (her lover and partner for several years), and Yoko Ono, and became involved with feminist and anti-war causes in the 1970s and 1980s. Rainer writes about how she constructed her dances—including The Mind Is a Muscle and its famous section, Trio A, as well as the recent After Many a Summer Dies the Swan—and about turning from dance to film and back to dance. And she writes about meeting her longtime partner Martha Gever and discovering the pleasures of domestic life.

The mosaic-like construction of Feelings Are Facts recalls the composition-by-juxtaposition of Rainer's work in film and dance, displaying prismatic variations from what she calls her "reckless past" for our amazement and appreciation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Memoir, Biography, Womens, Autobiography, Biography Memoir

473 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2006

About the author

Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York and was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in l962, a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance and art in the following decades. Since 1972, Rainer has completed seven feature-length films. She has received numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1969, 1988), a MacArthur Fellowship (1990-95), and a Wexner Prize (1995). A memoir, Feelings are Facts: a Life, was published in 2006.

Reviews

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels like a prank targeted specifically at me that this memoir pointedly ends immediately before Yvonne Rainer’s thirty-year film career begins. She literally mentions in the epilogue that Su Friedrich (experimental film namedrop 🫨) made fun of her for choosing to end the book when she does. Nonetheless!! Loved it and learned a ton about the way Yvonne’s mind works, and the artistic vision that carried over from her dance career to her eventual film one. Also: gastrointestinal disorder survivor queen! The medical stuff in this is so upsetting— not at all graphic but just painful and debilitating and never-ending. So so excited to rewatch MURDER and murder, devastating and sweet and so so so romantic, when it plays at the music box in a week.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeously written, self-aware memoir that is in equal measures an academic text, an unstuffy psychoanalysis, and a history of cutting-edge art and dance from 1950-1980. Rainer's life is an incredibly interesting one, and her voice is so clear throughout the book. She criticizes and conceptualizes the genre of memoir enough to make it clear she is being very deliberate about structure and subject matter, but not so much that it becomes cloyingly meta. Liberal use of photographs and quotations from her own work allow someone like me, who's never experienced her artworks, to follow along regardless.

[Maša · Rating 5 out of 5]

If before reading this book I had a bit of a crush on Yvonne Rainer's persona, it has now blown up into love. Absolute favourite of the year!

The book is not a conventional autobiography but rather an in-depth recount of her first forty years. Through describing her life path while at the same time including works of art that inspired her or detailed descriptions the motives and processes of her own work, Yvonne Rainer reveals herself to us wholesomely and enables us to understand her and her legacy even better.

[Hannah Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best memoirs I've ever read. she is always on-point: honest, witty, incisive. Because of Yvonne Rainer's involvement with Robert Morris & others, the book also reads as a kind of insider view of recent art history, which is fascinating.

[GOODGIRLREADS · Rating 5 out of 5]

The

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read, but I found it to be a bit disjointed.
Really interesting how a lot of her experiences ended up being in her films.

[Julian Donahue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved! The beginning was a bit slow when she’s detailing her life in SF before dancing but when she gets to describing the dance scene in NYC its amazing and very inspiring!😍

[Jenny R · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun if tonally disjointed memoir about dance and art in '60s NYC. Rainer is conversational, open and honest. The book can't seem to decide if it wants to be in present or past tense, about family/emotional drama or the nature of an artistic life. But despite the incongruity, it's a fun, education read.

[k · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like about this book is, first, Yvonne--who I knew nothing about before I read this--and, second, the way she writes about the purpose and process of art (or anything a person loves--I don't dance, but things she says about dancing make me think of how I've felt about writing).

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Up until 2/3rds of the book I kept thinking, " would love to read this." Later on, the story seemed to lose steam. Certainly the end was very abrupt and felt tacked on.

The writing is very good. I would recommend it.

[Jordan Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw and honest memoir. I had the honor and pleasure of being able to learn about this remarkable woman in school, and am so happy I chose to pick this one up and go even more in-depth into her life. Truly an inspirational life and a must-read for any woman-identifying creative.

[Cate · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful and very depressing.

[Mitsuko]

I'm not so sure about this one. I was really excited because the origins of the title, and her being in therapy...family of origin themes, etc. I just couldn't finish it because of boredom.

[Tráese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do believe that Rainer and I were separated at birth!

[Mary Billyou · Rating 4 out of 5]

A LOT of fun! like a beach read!

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant, intimate, inspiring.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful cover