Yvonne Rainer, one of the founders of the Judson dance Theater (1962), made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature-length films — Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), and MURDER and murder (1996), among others — she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov dance Foundation (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan). Since then she has made six dances, including AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M., Assisted Living: Do you have any money? and The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project – Altered Annually.

Her dances and films have been seen throughout the U.S., including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kitchen, Dia Beacon; in Europe and South America at the Louvre and Montpelier, also Documenta 12, Helsinki, Italy, Dublin; London, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Museum retrospectives of her work, including drawings, photos, films, notebooks, and memorabilia, have been presented at Kunsthaus Bregenz and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2012); the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, École des Beaux Artes, La Ferme du Buisson, Paris, and Raven Row, London (2014). A memoir — Feelings Are Facts: a Life — was published by MIT Press in 2006. A selection of her poetry was published in 2011 by Paul Chan’s Badlands Unlimited. Other writings have been collected in Work: 1961-73 (1974); The Films of Y.R. (1989); and A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts (1999). She is a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a MacArthur Fellowship.