Theoretical Explorations

Between Abstraction and Affect: A Comparative Study of Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A and Pina Bausch’s Café Müller

Cheng Chen1, Xinhuan Zeng2*
Cheng Chen
ROR Chung-Ang University, South Korea
ORCID https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5430-6045
Xinhuan Zeng (Corresponding Author)
ROR Panorama Scholarly Group, Germany
ORCID https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4486-4819
xinhuan@hanyang.ac.kr
Global Review of Humanities, Arts, and Society
DOI:https://doi.org/10.63802/grhas.V1.I5.173
Published:2025-12-05

Abstract

This study conducts a comparative analysis of two seminal works in twentieth-century contemporary dance—Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (1966) and Pina Bausch’s Café Müller (1978)—in order to illuminate the divergent aesthetic logics and philosophical orientations of Postmodern Dance and Tanztheater. While emerging from distinct cultural and historical contexts, the two works collectively mark a decisive shift in dance’s conceptual, expressive, and ontological frameworks. Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology and an expanded choreographic analysis model, the study examines each work through the interrelated dimensions of body politics, spatial composition, and temporal structure, supported by triangulated data from video documentation, archival materials, and critical reception. The analysis reveals that Trio A advances a radical reconceptualization of dance by rejecting theatricality, virtuosity, and emotional expressivity in favor of functional movement, structural neutrality, and egalitarian embodiment. In contrast, Café Müller mobilizes repetition, scenographic density, and emotionally charged physicality to articulate trauma, relational vulnerability, and embodied memory. Despite these differences, both works challenge conventional choreographic hierarchies and reposition the spectator as an active interpreter of meaning. The findings suggest that the aesthetic tension between abstraction and affect, neutrality and saturation, and conceptual inquiry and emotional dramaturgy constitutes a fundamental axis in contemporary dance discourse. By situating Trio A and Café Müller within broader philosophical and socio-cultural currents, the study demonstrates how each work expands the epistemic and expressive capacities of the moving body. Ultimately, this research underscores the enduring relevance of both choreographic traditions and argues that their dialectical interplay continues to inform the evolving terrain of performance practice, dance pedagogy, and embodied aesthetics in the twenty-first century.

Keywords:

Postmodern Dance; Tanztheater; Body Politics; Dance Philosophy; Trio A

Copyright Notice & License:

© 2025 The Author(s). This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Authors retain full copyright and grant GRHAS the right of first publication..

All articles published in Global Review of Humanities, Arts, and Society (GRHAS) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This license allows anyone to share, copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, including for commercial purposes, provided that proper attribution is given to the original author(s) and the source.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Journal Cover
PDF
187 Views

PDF Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Journal Info

ISSN3052-539X
PublisherPanorama Scholarly Group

How to Cite

Chen, C., & Zeng, X. (2025). Between Abstraction and Affect: A Comparative Study of Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A and Pina Bausch’s Café Müller. Global Review of Humanities, Arts, and Society, 1(5), 37-42. https://doi.org/10.63802/grhas.V1.I5.173

References

Banes, S. (1987). Terpsichore in Sneakers: Postmodern Dance. Wesleyan University Press.

Banes, S. (1993). Democracy's Body: Judson Dance Theater, 1962–1964. Duke University Press.

Barba, E. (1991). The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. Routledge.

Bentivoglio, L. (1985). Café Müller's nocturne: A reading. Estudis Escènics, 30, 99–104.

Birringer, J. (2002). Media and Performance: Along the Border. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Copeland, R. (2004). Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance. Routledge.

Foster, S. L. (2011). Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. Routledge.

Hoghe, R. (1986). The Theatre of Pina Bausch. Performing Arts Journal, 9(2/3), 30–42.

Kolesch, D. (2000). Theatre of emotions. Performance Research, 5(2), 42–49.

Lambert-Beatty, C. (2008). Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s. MIT Press.

Lepecki, A. (2006). Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. Routledge.

Peña, C. A. (2017). Pina Bausch and Memory in Café Müller [Master’s thesis, University of Florida]. ProQuest Dissertations.

Schlicher, S. (2019). Pina Bausch's dance films: Archive of emotions. Dance Chronicle, 42(2), 245–267.

Servos, N. (2008). Pina Bausch: Dance Theatre (J. Page, Trans.). K. Kieser Verlag. (Original work published 1996)

Wiegand, C. (2024, January 15). Forever review—Pina Bausch's Café Müller inspires heartbreaking redux. The Guardian.

Wookey, H. (2010). Dance is hard to see: Transmitting Trio A. Dance Research Journal, 42(1), 56–58.

Wosniak, C. (2018). Pina Bausch and Café Müller on screen. Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, 8(3), 469–486.Examples:

Hullermeier, E., & Rifqi, M. (2009). A fuzzy variant of the rand index for comparing clustering structures. In in Proc. IFSA/EUSFLAT Conf. (pp. 1294–1298). Newman, M. E. J., & Girvan, M. (2004). Finding and evaluating community structure in networks. Phys. Rev. E., 69, 026113.

Vehlow, C., Reinhardt, T., & Weiskopf, D. (2013). Visualizing fuzzy overlapping communities in networks. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph., 19, 2486–2495.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 20

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.