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Author
Carrie Lambert

Carrie Lambert examines the development of Yvonne Rainer’s interest in the human body as an object, and charts her transition from the humanism of Martha Graham’s expressionist approach to dance to a more impersonal and noncommunicative minimal approach.  Lambert believes Rainer’s Five Easy Pieces reflects Rainer on the cusp of this transition as she moves from choreography to filmmaking.  Trio A is prominently considered as the first instance of feminist thought in Rainer’s artistic work, significant in that it reveals to her for the first time that minimalism’s anti-humanism and passive disengagement are unstable positions for the body to occupy.