Trio A

Trio A, a solo dance by Rainer, was initially performed in 1966 as a trio by Rainer and fellow New York choreographer-dancers David  Gordon and Steve Paxton under the title The Mind is a Muscle, Part 1.  At the premiere, at Manhattan’s Judson Memorial Church, the dancers each  performed the same sequence of movements twice but not in unison,  accompanied by the sound of wooden slats being thrown from the balcony  one by one. Since then it has been presented in various forms, sometimes  integrated into other pieces by Rainer or adapted and interpreted by  other choreographers. This film depicts Rainer’s solo performance of the  work in 1978, several years after she transitioned from choreography to  filmmaking.

Trio A consists of a four-and-a-half-to-five-minute sequence  of discrete movements that, with the exception of walking, are never  repeated. Although it appears effortless, the dance is painstaking to  learn in its precise articulation of hands, arms, shoulders, feet, and  legs. It is a signature work by Rainer, who in the 1960s transposed to  dance the ideas that were then giving shape to the era’s Minimalist  sculpture and painting, abandoning the aesthetics of classical and  modern dance—which were rooted in virtuosic technique and expression—in  favor of an unenhanced physicality and uninflected continuity of motion.  The deceptive “ordinariness” of many of the individual movements in  Trio A had a profound impact on the development of postmodern dance.

Source: Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)

More information: www.moma.org