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Jill Johnston, a dedicated and sympathetic critic of the New York avant-garde, provides one of the first published accounts of the complete version of Yvonne Rainer’s multipart dance, The Mind Is a Muscle (1966–68) (in particular the section titled Trio A). Johnston already seems aware that it will be regarded as a canonical work of postmodern dance. The article is not only a review of a specific evening of the performance but it is also a historically informed effort to take stock of Rainer’s trajectory and to spell out the implications of her work on the fields of dance and performance broadly speaking. Johnston notes that Trio A’s “innumerable discrete parts” are “assimilated by a smooth unaccented continuity” that departs from the hierarchical and “plot-like” structure of conventional dance phrasing seen in ballet and modern dance. She notes Rainer’s hybridization of dance and everyday movement; the neutrality and matter-of-factness of the performers; and their disengagement from the audience in a kind of “tactical withdrawal.” Personal, melodramatic, and comedic materials are presented in a deadpan way, and there are provocative juxtapositions of contradictory movements and sounds. Johnston calls Rainer’s work “of the first magnitude (…since Cunningham’s radical alterations) in advancing the medium within a context of movement still understood as ‘dance.’” While the review is celebratory overall, Johnston does seem to agree with other critics that the multitude of props and set pieces amounts to a distraction. The dance critic Deborah Jowitt’s take on The Mind Is a Muscle, also included in the Archive section of chapter 8, appeared in the same issue of The Village Voice as Johnston’s review.