Wow! eBook
Nevertheless: A Choreographic Workbook
Author(s): Yvonne Rainer (Author), Emmanuèle Phuon Pascal Lemaitre (Illustrator), Pascal Lemaitre (Illustrator)
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication Date: July 16, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 176 pages
- ISBN-10: 0300279280
- ISBN-13: 9780300279283
Book Description
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 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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A gem, full of unique ideas for choreographing and teaching movement to trained dancers and pedestrian performers. . . . Dancers, artists, musicians, choreographers, and educators will enjoy reading this engaging book by this inventive, critical thinker and creator.”―Nancy Alfaro, “Wendy Perron’s Notable Dance Books of 2025” (blog)
“Rainer’s accomplishment in this book is to translate her artistic mind into a practice. It is of course then truly original, and she is sharing her originality generously, humanly, here in this book. It’s pure gold for someone who is wanting to wrestle with how this revolutionary choreographer upended art history.”—Annie-B Parson, Big Dance Theater
About the Author
Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, and a cofounder of the Judson Dance Theater. 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 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, and elsewhere.
