56th AAFF YVONNE RAINER EVENTS

This year, the AAFF hosts legendary filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer Yvonne Rainer with an amazing lineup of films, a dance performance, and a lecture for the festival audiences to enjoy. First, the AAFF is teaming with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and the Department of Dance in U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD) to bring you a pre-festival film screening of the documentary Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer by Jack Walsh. Afterward, U-M Professor Peter Sparling will moderate a panel discussion featuring U-M faculty experts in dance, art, theater, and art history including Professors Diane Kirkpatrick, Jessica Fogel, and Holly Hughes. This free public event will take place in UMMA’s Helmut Stern Auditorium on Wednesday, March 7, at 5:30pm. To learn more about the program and the amazing panel of faculty experts, click here! Yvonne Rainer will kick off her festival events on Thursday, March 22, with her Penny Stamps Speaker Series lecture A Truncated History of the Universe for Dummies: a Rant Dance at the Michigan Theater at 5:10pm. On March 23, the festival screens Rainer’s 1990 feature Privilege, a subversive film about menopause, at the Michigan Theater at 7pm. Finally, at 4pm on March 24 at the Michigan Theater, the Freshman Touring Company in the Department of Dance at U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance will perform Rainer’s Chair Pillow (which she choreographed in 1969) before the screening of Rainer's Five Easy Pieces. Rarely seen prior to their 2004 release, Five Easy Pieces includes five short 8mm and 16mm black-and-white films that Rainer made between 1966 and 1969 for use in live multimedia performances.