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Interactive Gateway Dance

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Learning the Dance

Specialist Pat Catterson teaches the dance Chair/Pillow. Watch as Pat Catterson clearly demonstrates the movement phrase, gives corrections, and helps students find the appropriate performance quality.

Coaching Notes

Pat Catterson coaches and provides performance notes regarding specific gestures, phrasing and prop holds.

Teaching Chair Pillow

Pat Catterson directs workshop students in the appropriate effort quality for the dance. She talks about dance in the 1960s and Yvonne Rainers movement signature.

Dance in 1969

In this video clip Pat Catterson is teaching the work Chair/Pillow.

Yvonne Rainer Coaching

When Yvonne Rainer came to ASU she gave the students very specific coaching notes to guide their performance of Chair/Pillow. She shared her intent when choreographing Chair/Pillow and the 1960s history surrounding Judson Dance Theater experimentations.

Struggle Coaching notes

Watch as Yvonne Rainer assist the students perform functional movement by demonstrating the difference of pretending to struggle and actually struggling.

Coaching Notes

In this video clip, Yvonne gives additional corrections to assist the students performance. She also asks the Labanotator, Valarie Mockabee to clarify the counts.

Historical Context

If you are wondering what Chair/Pillow is all about, here is an explanation from the choreographer. Listen as Yvonne presents descriptive and historical information about the work.

1970s Art as Protest

In the video Yvonne Rainer reflects on the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the peace demonstrations that followed. Yvonne Rainer share two ways she used dance as a means of action for social change.

Labanotation Score

Labanotator Valerie Mockabee recorded the dance Chair/Pillow so that future generations of dancers could learn the dance. In these clips she talks about the role notation plays in dance reconstruction of a and walks us through the process of recording a dance.

Notating Chair Pillow

View the notation of Chair/Pillow and learn how Valarie Mockabee updates the score at the request of Yvonne Rainer.

Documentation Process

Check out how quickly Valarie Mockabee records a walk, a salute, and even a smile.

Labanotation Score

In this clip Valarie explains how to read the Labanotation symbols and reveals the importance of contextual information so that people a 100 years from now can reconstruct a dance accurately.

Final Performance

Watch the final performance of Chair/Pillow and observe how research, investigation, and rehearsal informed university and high school students performance of the dance. In the beginning it was difficult for the students to embody the functional movements of lifting, carrying, and tossing the pillow without dancey embellishments. But in the end, see how they were successful manipulating a chair and a pillow with the matter of fact quality that Yvonne Rainer intended.

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