Pas de Trois: Trio A Dancing Between Performance, Film, and Art
Arts
HAVC 100A
The difference between theatrical performance and performance art has always been a tenuous one, but in the case of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal piece Trio A,which debuted in 1966, this difference is even more complicated by the existence of a 1978 film of the work. In an attempt to grapple with the unclear border between visual studies and performance studies, this paper looks into how the translation between media recontextualizes, rerepresents, remembers, and ultimately reforms Trio A into two different artworks: a live dance piece and a historic film. In order to explore the difference between the works I look at the transformation of the piece through its performance history, its realization of the ideals in Rainer’s 1965 “NO Manifesto”, the qualities unique to its performed incarnations, and the inherent semiotic differences between live performance and cinema. Though Trio A live and recorded are ultimately two different entities, they both serve different cultural functions.
