{"id":3275,"date":"2012-03-28T13:53:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T11:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=3275"},"modified":"2012-03-28T13:53:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T11:53:41","slug":"keren-cytter-on-swan-lake-beauty-and-yvonne-rainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/keren-cytter-on-swan-lake-beauty-and-yvonne-rainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Keren Cytter on Swan Lake, beauty and Yvonne Rainer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3284\" title=\"Yvonne Rainer, The Mind Is a Muscle, Mai 1966. Judson Memorial Church, NYC. Photo: Peter Moore \u00a9 Estate of Peter Moore \/ VAGA, NYC \u00a9 The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2006.M.24)  \" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7_2_Rainer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"518\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I saw Swan Lake at Berlin\u2019s Staatsballett on January 1<sup>st<\/sup>, 2012. I was still hung-over from the night before so during the intermission, I wolfed down three mini-sandwiches as I was telling my friends things like \u2018Aren\u2019t those swans just beautiful?\u2019 and \u2018What a masterpiece!\u2019 I\u2019m leaving Berlin to move to New York so I\u2019m trying to do all the things I haven\u2019t done in my entire ten years here. At any rate, it was the first time I\u2019ve seen a classic ballet. The production was grand \u00ad\u2013 breathtaking, really, with over 100 people on stage. They had these screens that they projected lights onto to create different layers on the stage, like parallel dimensions. Or different levels of perception. I was having a great time, and when it took the curtain a little while to rise before the second act, I was sitting with anticipation thinking \u2018What the hell are they doing there?\u2019 Then the curtain went up and it was just magnificent. They had this dry ice machine and it looked like a swampy lake that poured down into the orchestra pit. And then the dancers came out, forty white swans in the fogy meadows. Absolutely amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized that I needed to see some classic ballet repertoires. I also realized that it\u2019s not really high art. Every time the prima ballerina did a pirouette the audience clapped. I mean, what are they clapping for? It\u2019s not the first time she\u2019s done it, she\u2019s not the first person to do it. It\u2019s routine for her. She got it right the first time, so what\u2019s the big deal? But I loved the dance with the four swans, the pas de quatre. I watched it over and over again at home on YouTube. Let me tell you, ballet is really something. I had so much fun that day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA few months ago, I invited some friends to see my theater piece at the HAU, and they really suffered. As if they were watching a documentary about factory farming, seeing chickens being slaughtered. It was a back-to-back night with a piece by artist Phil Collins and they liked his work much better. They said at least it had a stage set, and costumes. And a plot.\u00a0 And then when I saw Swan Lake I understood what they were missing &#8211; Some grace. Beauty. I mean, the ballet costumes were spectacular and I could see, in my mind, the storage room where they\u2019re kept and how there\u2019s people who mend them and dust them out. If I could only go into that room! So I strongly recommend seeing it. And also Yvonne Rainer. There\u2019s a retrospective of her work opening soon. I\u2019ve only seen her stuff on YouTube. I think that she\u2019s very important and classic, and maybe a little underestimated. But she\u2019s being rediscovered by a new generation now, what\u2019s with the retrospectives in Europe and in America before, at the DIA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3283\" title=\"Yvonne Rainer, Trio A, 1973. The Portland Center for Visual Arts \u00a9 The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2006.M.24) \t\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7_1_Rainer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"926\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI copied her stuff when I worked on my dance pieces. Wait, no, I used her for \u2018inspiration\u2019.<br \/> In my work, the narrative is not the central thing, but it moves things forward. Also in Swan Lake. I didn\u2019t know the story, I read it online later, so the ballet actually didn\u2019t rely on the plot for me. What I didn\u2019t like when I read the \u2018story\u2019 though was that thing with the names, Odile and Odette. It\u2019s not like they speak in the ballet so why do we need to give them names? For Rainer, the plot is obsolete too. And I could actually see the development from classic ballet to Rainer: when I saw the pas de quatre<em> <\/em>with the four swans it totally reminded me of Rainer\u2019s work, especially of her piece Trio A, but also of Samuel Beckett\u2019s, who makes square patterns that repeat themselves, with four corners. You can see the formal development from Swan Lake to Beckett. It\u2019s all about patterns repeating and small variations. It\u2019s interesting that these developments make it more simplistic but at the same time, as in Beckett, render it more abstract. Discovering these connections was interesting for me, as was the idea of beauty and grace that I kind of forgot about. And so did Rainer. And Beckett. It may not be the most important thing but as you can tell, it left quite an impression. Especially the dry ice machine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe choreography itself in my dance performances is also closer to Rainer than to Swan Lake. Obviously. Rainer was a minimalist in terms of stripping dance down to isolated movements and claiming that everyone is a dancer. She obviously hasn\u2019t met me yet\u2026 I was \u2018inspired\u2019 by Trio A, meaning, I did the repeated patterns and the basic underlining feeling. I tried to copy the beauty of it, not the exact choreography. With Rainer, the patterns echo each other fluently and express one simple and singular thing. It\u2019s one state of mind, presented in minor variations. So I can see the connection between my work and Rainer\u2019s, but I\u2019m probably also the only person who can find a connection between Rainer and Swan Lake. I hear she\u2019s very nice and would probably be OK with the comparison now, but when she was starting out, Swan Lake was everything she worked against. \u2018But I\u2019m ground breaking! I\u2019m anti\u2019 she\u2019d say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of stripping movement down, in Swan Lake the movements are there for beauty alone; otherwise it\u2019s a fairy-tale, not a ballet. And with Rainer it\u2019s movement for the sake of movement so really, what\u2019s the difference? Especially in that pas de quatre? What do the four swans crossing arms and moving like a four-headed being have to do with the plot? They\u2019re there because there\u2019s music, there\u2019s time and space, so there\u2019s movement. \u201c<strong><\/strong> <em>As told to Hili Perlson.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/current-issue\/\" target=\"_blank\">From Sleek 33, The Brand New Retro.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Yvonne Rainer, <em>Space, Body, Language<\/em><\/strong><strong>.<br \/>Kunsthaus Bergenz until April 9, and Museum Ludwig, April 4 \u2013 July 29 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3285\" title=\"Yvonne Rainer, Parts of Some Sextets, M\u00e4rz 1965. With Robert Morris, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Tony Holder, Sally Gross, Robert Rauschenberg, Judith Dunn und Joseph Schlichter. The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT \u00a9 The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2006.M.24)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7_5_Rainer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"791\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I saw Swan Lake at Berlin\u2019s Staatsballett on January 1st, 2012. I was still hung-over from the night before so during the intermission, I wolfed down three mini-sandwiches as I was telling my friends things like \u2018Aren\u2019t those swans just beautiful?\u2019 and \u2018What a masterpiece!\u2019 I\u2019m leaving Berlin to move to New York so I\u2019m&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[115,231,233,234],"class_list":["post-3275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hili-perlson","tag-keren-cytter","tag-swan-lake","tag-yvonne-rainer"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Keren Cytter on Swan Lake, beauty and Yvonne Rainer Keren Cytter on Swan Lake, beauty and Yvonne Rainer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/keren-cytter-on-swan-lake-beauty-and-yvonne-rainer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keren Cytter on Swan Lake, beauty and Yvonne Rainer Keren Cytter on Swan Lake, beauty and Yvonne Rainer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;I saw Swan Lake at Berlin\u2019s Staatsballett on January 1st, 2012. 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