Nevertheless: A Choreographic Workbook

A legendary choreographer’s personal and practical guide to the art of dance-making

Yvonne Rainer was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, a 1960s New York artists’ collective that championed ordinary, spare movements and spontaneity. Rainer’s decades of creativity--in dance and in filmmaking--have inspired generations of avant-garde, political, and feminist choreographers. Her many works include the iconic dance Trio A and the film Hand Movie.

In this book, Rainer dancer and choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon helps Rainer gather teaching notes from her dance classes and workshops, passages from her creative journals, and her newer thoughts on movement and art, opening a window on to the life’s work of a transformative artist. With fifty prompts for improvisational movement (＂39. Travel a long distance as fast as you can while making regular changes in your means of locomotion＂), sly illustrations by Pascal Lemaître, and an illuminating interview with Phuon, this workbook makes Rainer’s friendly, humorous, and down&-to-earth creative practice available to everyone. Because, as Rainer says, if you can move, you are a dancer.

Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, and a cofounder of the Judson Dance Theater. She choreographed dances from 1960 to 1973, made seven feature-length films between 1972 and 1996, and returned to dance in 2000. She has received the MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Merce Cunningham Award. She lives in New York City. Emmanuèle Phuon, a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, is a faculty member at Montclair State University, NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Open Arts/Collaborative Arts, and Yale University. She is one of seven authorized transmitters of Yvonne Rainer’s work. Phuon lives in Brooklyn, NY. Pascal Lemaître is an author and illustrator based in Belgium. He has illustrated five books by Toni Morrison and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Le Monde, Libération, and many other publications.