Trio A: A Baker’s Dozen Performance by Elliot Gordon Mercer

Trio A consists of a 5-minute sequence of movement that was initially presented as The Mind Is a Muscle, Part I at Judson Church on January 10, 1966. There it was performed by Rainer, David Gordon, and Steve Paxton simultaneously but not in unison. Since then the dance has taken on myriad forms, from execution by a large group in the nude (Trio A With Flags) to a retrograde version by Pat Catterson to a recent Geriatric with Talking version by Rainer herself. Trio A: a Baker’s Dozen is a solo version of the dance performed thirteen consecutive times over the period of roughly one hour. The audience is free to roam between the performance and the exhibition.

Yvonne Rainer danced and choreographed from 1960 to 1975; made seven feature-length 16mm films from 1972 to 1996; returned to choreography in 2000. Feelings Are Facts: a Life was published in 2006. She currently works with six dancers informally known as "The Raindears," who, in the current year (2017), will be performing The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project-Altered Annually.

Elliot Gordon Mercer is a Ph.D candidate in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University. He curated the exhibit Mapping Dance: The Scores of Anna Halprin at the San Francisco Museum of Performance + Design and is editing a forthcoming catalogue on Halprin’s scores. Elliot danced a solo version of Trio A Pressured in 2016 and performed in Slow Dancing: Trio A, a collaborative film project produced by Rainer and David Michalek.