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June 2006
Belligerence - Habit or Preference?
Here at the American Academy in Rome's beautiful Villa Aurelia. The rush hour traffic is going thru periodic paroxysms of nationalistic celebration, as it seems that the Italian team either won today's World Cup match or made a goal.
The World Cup match between the Italians and Americans last week, as everyone knows by now, became a bloody and demeaning spectacle. The European press roundly condemned both teams for their ungentlemanly behavior. The Americans predictably took special heat for some of their players', coach's and officials' language heavy reliance on metaphors of "war." Roger Cohen in the International Herald Tribune struggled for the high ground saying that it was all a matter of perception. Was the American team truly brutish and aggressive, or were they passionate and so fully committed that they dared believe in heroism, glory and an all or nothing approach to even a soccer game?
My personal feelings of superiority and disgust were muted somewhat as I look back at the last month or so in my own life and the life of the company. What springs to mind is the first night performance of Blind Date at the Spoleto USA Festival in Charleston, SC: It had been a difficult two days of preparation for what was ultimately a very successful evening marked by warm ovation and good notices the next day. However, my Achilles Heel flared up when, as we had left the stage and the applause was practically over, there was a lone heckler booing for all he was worth somewhere in the large house. Be it the heightened adrenaline in my system or expectation of disapproval from what I perceived to be a conservative community, I went ballistic charging back on the stage, demanding that the lights be turned up and that the dissident reveal himself, come down to the stage and that he and I would hash this out in public!
I received an email the next day from a self described "liberal and supporter of my work" chiding me for behaving as a schoolyard bully and depriving the audience member of his right to dissent. He was right!
The next day our presenter, Nunally Kersh, called and, in the most caring way possible, informed me that I would have to issue a statement to the media. One of the reporters expressed concern that a work like Blind Date that was "obviously anti-war," should be subverted by my belligerent behavior. I said to her that she shouldn't ascribe such an easy reading to the work! I thought that such a reduction flattened the ambiguity of the piece into a too easy polemic and a toothless one. The work's closing image of a young man lying still on stage is for me first and foremost a tragic reminder of a series of misperceptions and wrong moves. I said to her, as I said the following evening in a post-performance discussion that I would consider myself a belligerent person and that I try to instill in my dancers a passionate sense that there are things worth fighting for. What I did not say and what I am trying to understand in light of the blood spilled and the bellicose rhetoric of the World Cup spectacle is "what are those things worth fighting for and when and how do we recognize them?"
That seems to be the question driving my thought and creative work these days with the company. Chapel/Chapter, (the site specific work being created for Harlem Stage's new Gatehouse space to be premiered on December 5) which unfortunately exists much more in my head and heart right now than it does as an actual experience, wants to understand our responses as individuals and as members of the society to what is perceived as "evil acts" - murder, sadism, treachery...
In the sweltering Roman ghetto, right by the very place where in October 1943 Rome's Jews were gathered and deported, a young gallery owner said to me today that, though she is part American, she does not want to raise her children as Americans because, among other things, Americans frighten her. I could have reminded her of the spot in which we were standing and how, if there was a moment when one should have fought, that was certainly such a moment. But I didn't say that. In fact, a part of me agreed with her. Thinking back to Charleston, I would say, yes, I frighten myself and we as Americans frighten me as well.
-- Bill T. Jones (Tuesday, June 27, 2006)
