Dressage Performances as Infrastructural Critique: Mike Kelley and Yvonne Rainer’s Dancing Horses

Abstract

Incorporating both animal studies and Marxist analysis, this article examines artistic works by Yvonne Rainer and Mike Kelley (in collaboration with choreographer Kate Foley) that stage humans performing as horses. Building on the rich history of how the Marxist tradition has characterized dressage, I trace the relationships between social conditioning, artistic training, and performance. While moving within what I call the dressage mechanisms of the contemporary art world, I read Rainer and Kelley’s performances as critiques of societal dressage, a process that capitalism subjects human and animal actors to, albeit to different degrees.