Yvonne Rainer & John Erdman — “This is the story of a woman who…” — Performance Announcement Postcard, Portland Center for the Visual Arts, 1973

Original performance announcement postcard
Offset print on card stock
Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA), Portland, Oregon
May 1973
Approx. postcard format
Condition: good vintage condition; light age toning, minor surface wear and handling marks consistent with age

Issued for Yvonne Rainer and John Erdman’s 1973 presentation This is the story of a woman who…, this card documents a key transitional moment in Rainer’s practice as her work moved from post-minimal choreography toward narrative, language, and film structures. Produced at the Portland Center for the Visual Arts, the announcement belongs to an early ecosystem of artist-run spaces that circulated experimental performance outside traditional theatre and museum systems.

The work itself rejected theatrical conventions in favour of fragmented narrative, task-based movement, projected text, and emotionally restrained gestures. Rainer’s choreography had already challenged spectacle through ordinary movement and procedural structures, and by the early 1970s these concerns began folding into cinematic and psychological territory. Rather than resolving narrative, the work treated it as something unstable and discontinuous.

The front reproduces a photograph of Rainer performing Trio A (1966), perhaps her most influential choreographic work. Trio A famously replaced virtuosic display with continuous unaccented movement, refusing climax, hierarchy, or direct engagement with the audience. The body operates less as performer than as carrier of actions.

Within a New Rare inventory the card functions as a residual performance object — a printed support for an event designed to disappear. What remains is a small administrative trace from a larger structure of movement, language, and temporary encounter.

Original period item. Shipping and handling included in the listed price.