Yvonne Rainer : HELLZAPOPPIN’—What about the bees?

European premiere: January 27, 2023
Further dates: January 28 and 29, 2023

HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees?, a new work by dance and film pioneer Yvonne Rainer (born 1934) will have its European premiere at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden on January 27, 2023.

American choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer is one of the most influential artistic figures of the last fifty years and a major innovator in several disciplines, from dance and cinema, to feminist theory and poetry. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theatre in New York—an informal experimental collective that gave birth to postmodern dance in the 1960s—Rainer was one of the leaders of a generation that expanded the conventions of dance and performance by exploring the use of banal, everyday actions and tasks such as standing still, walking, and running.

HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees? touches upon Rainer’s worlds of text, experimental film, and choreography.

Her 2002 video After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid constitutes the first part of the show. It juxtaposes dance excerpts from After Many a Summer Dies the Swan—a work choreographed by Rainer for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project that marked Rainer’s return to dance in 2000—with texts by Austrian artists and thinkers such as Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Arnold Schönberg, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The 30-minute-long video delves into Vienna’s self-absorbed, dreamy, avant-garde modernism at the turn of the century and connects the far-right reality of today with its roots in early twentieth-century Europe.

The second part of the program is HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees? a piece for nine performers. Reflecting upon America’s ongoing struggle with systemic racism and in keeping with Rainer’s earlier performances, the new piece combines text, dance, and film excerpts from two classics—the 1941 Hollywood musical HELLZAPOPPIN’ and French auteur Jean Vigo’s 1993 short Zero for Conduct—as a backdrop and inspiration for its choreographic components.

Yvonne Rainer has announced that HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees? is her “last dance.” It represents the culmination of sixty years of an oeuvre encompassing in choreography, filmmaking, writing, and teaching—an iconic body of work that has had a transformative impact on several generations of artists across the world.

Following artist Jimmy Robert’s solo exhibition (on view through January 15, 2023), the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden will continue its exploration of performative methods and works by focusing on Yvonne Rainer, whose approach to the body “more as a source of an infinite variety of movements” dovetails remarkably with the Kunsthalle’s program, its curatorial vision, and its reflections on feminist, queer, and critical perspectives of what it means to live and transform together. The presentation of Rainer’s latest work in Baden-Baden is thus a powerful statement on pressing issues, from systemic racism to social discrimination, that require courage if they are to be named and revealed.

HELLZAPOPPIN’—What about the bees? was commissioned by Performa, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, with generous support from Sarah Arison and the Performa Commissioning Fund. It is presented in Europe by Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden alongside Performa. The performances in Baden-Baden are supported by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program with funds from the Federal Foreign Office.

Concept and direction: Yvonne Rainer, aided by research and inputs from the dancers. Assistant director: Pat Catterson. Performed by Emily Coates, Brittany Bailey, Brittany Engel-Adams, Patricia Hoffbauer, Vincent McCloskey, Emmanuèle Phuon, David Thomson, and Timothy Ward. Guest performer: Kathleen Chalfant.

Yvonne Rainer made the transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer and dancer (1960–1975). After making seven experimental, feature-length movies, she returned to dance in 2000 upon an invitation by Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan). Her dances and films have been shown throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, both in concert halls and museum retrospectives.