Performing nude with U.S. flags tied at their necks and draped over the fronts of their bodies, Yvonne Rainer and five dancers from the Grand Union dance troupe perform Trio A (1966) for a solemn, attentive audience at the opening of The People’s Flag Show. Organized by Faith Ringgold, Jean Toche, and Jon Hendricks at Judson Memorial Church, the group exhibition was staged against the backdrop of the Vietnam War in response to repressive laws regarding the display and use of the American flag. (A few days later, the organizers were arrested and then acquitted on charges of desecrating the flag.) Rainer adapted the presentation of her preexisting dance Trio A to highlight the fraught relationship between the flag and the identity and humanity of those it purports to represent, as well as to combine multiple taboos into what she has described as “a double-barreled attack on repression and censorship.” Surrounded by a multitude of artworks commenting on the flag, the dancers become objects of the spectators’ gaze, their bodies defined by the flag’s iconic design in ways akin to the audience members themselves, who are subjects similarly living under conditions defined by the American flag and all the causes it is used to justify.
Performers: Barbara Lloyd, David Gordon, Nancy Green, Steve Paxton, Lincoln Scott, and Yvonne Rainer.
Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.
