This one-page excerpt from the score for Parts of Some Sextets (1965) takes the form of a table, an unusual format for Yvonne Rainer. Choreographed for ten performers interacting with twelve mattresses, the participants included Rainer, Lucinda Childs, Judith Dunn, Sally Gross, Deborah Hay, Tony Holder, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Schlichter. The vertical axis of the chart lists thirty-one movement phrases, while the horizontal axis represents a sequence of thirty-second intervals. The letters in the body of the chart stand for the individual performers who are to execute the movements at a given time. During rehearsal, the score was posted to the wall for easy reference. The clear layout of information belies the difficulty of memorizing what was in practice a disconnected, nonintuitive sequence of gestures. Rainer has written, “Since there was no ‘organic’ or kinesthetic continuity, some of us found it extraordinarily difficult to learn and ended up memorizing it by rote, like multiplication tables or dates in history” (Rainer, “Some Retrospective Notes on a Dance for 10 People and 12 Mattresses Called Parts of Some Sextets, Performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, and Judson Memorial Church, New York, in March 1965,” in Mariellen R. Sandford, ed., Happenings and Other Acts [New York: Routledge, 1995], 166).
Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.
