He’s also the co-founder,with his late partner Arnie Zane (who died of AIDS in 1988), of the Bill T.Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Thanks to Alverno Presents, the company ismaking its fifth appearance in Milwaukeeon Sunday, Feb. 28, at 3 p.m. at the Pitman Theatre in a masterful, hour-longwork by Jones called Serenade/TheProposition. I saw it on DVD weeks ago and I continue to be moved by it. Ifyou can use a reminder of all the reasons art matters, I think this willprovide it.
Jones and hiscollaborators combine movement, music, text, costume, film and design to “pushbuttons”to evoke associations likely to be different for each viewerinrelation to the subject, which is us,our democracy, our nation dedicated tothe proposition that all men are created equal, a proposition that must beproven and re-proven. The dance refers to some of the most wrenching events inAmerican history, as well as some of the most inspiring, and summons a visionof our time in which, as Jones puts it, “We are living in an undeclared war comingfrom every direction.” Jones scoffs at the notion that art should be keptseparate from politics or dance from meaning.
In 2007, he accepted amajor commission from Illinois’ RaviniaFestival to create a new work on the life and/or legacy of Abraham Lincoln forthe 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln’sbirth. Jones is African American, born 58 years ago in Florida, the 10th of 12 children whosefamily migrated north during his childhood. He says with a characteristicdouble edge that Lincolnwas the only white man he was allowed to love unconditionally. Nonetheless, heneeded to immerse himself not only in Lincolnand the Civil War, but also in all its implications and resonances.
“How can I talk aboutsuch a strong, ambiguous figure in a way that also talks about us? Any goodwork of art must talk about us,” Jones says. “Was he a good man? Can we seethat man anywhere in us or around us now? Am I a good man? Are we good people?The ultimate goal is the heart, and I had to start with my own.”
He’s made three performanceson the subject. 100 Migrations, aone-time-only event at the Universityof Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.,was a ritualized communal storytelling performance. He asked 100 people toaddress such questions as “What did Lincolnmean to you?” and “What does history mean to us?” The stories that emerged offamilies, ancestors and half-remembered lessons helped him ground what becamethe Ravinia piece, titled Fondly Do WeHope…Fervently Do We Pray.
Serenade/The Proposition is a stand-alone work emanating lessfrom Lincoln’sbiography than from the nation’s history of rhetoric and real bodies at war. Ithad its premiere at the 2008 American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C.,and has toured since. Itfeatures stunning original music, played and sung live, along with recorded andlive texts taken from speeches by Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and OliverWendell Holmes, mixed with recorded personal conversations Jones had with thedancers as they made the work. As costumes, the dancers took their own clothes andtore and pasted them to suggest the Civil War era. The rolling white columnsand filmed images confound time and space. The company has been raciallyintegrated from its founding in 1983. In continuously jolting ways, thebrilliant, beautiful dancers manage to suggest all the idealism and all theviolence of our nation’s history.
