Feelings Are Facts

A master choreographer and filmmaker, Rainer now demonstrates her impressive expertise at writing, inventing and performing brilliantly in a new genre: the meta-auto-biography. Rainer's memoir exudes the same rigorous intelligence and imaginative whimsy that marked her dances. Her vivid descriptions of the everyday infuse history with physicality, illuminating with great precision and insight one body's journey through the second half of the twentieth century.

Susan Leigh Foster, Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles

The same bracing honesty, sly wit, human insight, and formal brilliance that have made Yvonne Rainer among the most influential figures of her generation make Feelings are Facts an irresistible pleasure. The book is both a moving personal memoir and a fascinating cultural history; it reveals the complex relationship between the emotional life and creative work of a remarkable artist during a period of seismic shifts in American culture and society.

Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

A master choreographer and filmmaker Rainer now demonstrates her impressive expertise at writing inventing and performing brilliantly in a new genre: the meta-auto-biography. Rainer's memoir exudes the same rigorous intelligence and imaginative whimsy that marked her dances. Her vivid descriptions of the everyday infuse history with physicality illuminating with great precision and insight one body's journey through the second half of the twentieth century.

Susan Leigh Foster, Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures, University of California Los Angeles

In a matter-of-fact style, she explores the various relationships of her life, analyzes herself and the artistic process, and examines her experimental work in dance (e.g., The Mind Is a Muscle) as well as the milieu of the early Sixties (Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol all make appearances). This unique view of the creative environment and portrait of the artist as a young woman is recommended...

Library Journal

Particularly fascinating are her descriptions of her intentions in creating certain dances and the struggle between directing dancers and allowing improvisation to color the work. The explorations of the Judson crew, including Rainer, continue to influence contemporary dance, and Rainer's chronicle of her journey as an artist is a winning addition to the literature about this groundbreaking era.

Publishers Weekly