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November 2006
Letter to a Friend in Rome
Dear P.A.,
"Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the boat side and the snow of light
His decks are drenched in miracles
Oh, miracles of fishes, the long dead bite"
Dylan Thomas - The Ballad of the Long Legged Bait
That's the best I can offer in response to a whale of a couple of paragraphs!
While Bjorn and I need to cast around a bit in the latter part of the quotation you sent, the early part wherein Adamsberg comments that "He was aware that his own mind produced a mixed bag of mental items of uneven size and value, and that things did not necessarily happen the same way for other people" has particular resonance today for me. Last night we participated in a curious yearly ritual that Prof. of Dance and Dance History, Charmaine Warren, orchestrates at the Ailey Fordham University program for her students. She invited Elizabeth Streb, Susan Marshall, Ralph Lemon and me to address the issue of "Then and Now" for an audience of soon to be dance-graduates. What do they want to do and who are they? That's the scary part! Many of them seem to want to dance in our companies, but in the meticulous way in which they were taking notes and thru the intelligent questions they were asking about what it means to be an artist and when one becomes one, how electronic reproduction has affected our work, the role of doubt in our work, the place of history, lead me to wonder if they are not more clearly dancing intellectuals who should perhaps skip the thankless task of sweat and drama that is a dancer's life and get to the heavy lifting of analysis and cultural observation? But what I really wanted to say was that in sitting with these four colleagues whom I have grown up w/over the last 20 to 30 years, it was remarkable that we had anything in common, or more precisely, there was a sense of an affinity that is perhaps nothing more than having survived the same battlefield, or is it - to use your metaphor - been fishing in the same ocean?
You sound great, as are we. The fall has been nothing short of magic, performing its Loie Fuller escapades of light, outlandish color and near excruciating dance between the two. Our garden as it deepens and develops under Bjorn's and the Hey Hoe Gardeners loving eye and hands gives rest and comfort, even though it seems impossible to ever be finished.
Professionally, much is going on. You probably have been reading my blog on our website and so you get the drift...
As for the elections, how does the old song go: "be careful of what you wish..." For some reason similar to your own, we could not allow ourselves a full throated cry of victorious joy. Is this a trap? Now that everything has been trashed, is this a quagmire that we're walking into in terms of cleaning up the mess? Those concerns aside, it sure feels damn good that at least we have a chance to try again.
Have you been reading much about the miraculous Mr. Obama? Did you know that he converted to Christianity and that he is now a god fearing, church going man? Perhaps I am stating the obvious in saying that it seems one can't really hold high public office in this country unless one looks and smells (and prays) like a conservative. But, maybe that's the nature of consensus-building, the mantra of this particular moment.
That's it for now. We also wish we could share a meal together. There's so much more to say and not say, but observe.
Big squeeze to Matthew from both of us.
Warmly,
Bill
-- Bill T. Jones (Wednesday, November 15, 2006)
Two Projects, Two Processes
Let’s attribute it to jet lag as we’ve just returned from the Melbourne Festival. As I sit down to write, I’m experiencing a peculiar state of mind that could be evidence of the muddling of disparate ideas. Or, perhaps on the contrary, this state allows me a brief moment of synthesis.
What am I getting at? Event before we took Blind Date to Australia ten days ago, I was doing double duty at the New 42nd Street Studios. While the bulk of my rehearsal days were spent in the trenches working on Chapel/Chapter, which has its premiere (though in my heart I consider this the beginning of an inquiry, not its end) at the brand new Gatehouse at Harlem Stage on December 5 thru 9, some daily hours were set apart to run upstairs to tend to my choreographic contribution to Spring Awakening, that will be premiering at the O’Neill Theater on Broadway December 10.
Though I strive to keep these two projects - two processes - separate, there are sometimes surprising parallels if not in fact overlaps.
Like it or not, Chapel/Chapter seems to need that fluid exchange between music and theater that is freely embraced by a Broadway show like Spring Awakening.
Spring Awakening is all about storytelling. Chapel/Chapter reluctantly illustrates three stories. The term illustration is imprecise as the stories are exploited in a way that seeks to question them as narratives. What’s more, the elemental immediacy of the dancing and the chameleon-like soundscape, all strive for an equal place so as not to teach any lessons, but rather to evoke a frame of mind.
Spring Awakening demands from me a distance as it is so highly collaborative and I am neither the source of the work nor the reason for its existence. Chapel/Chapter is – as all my works for my company ¬– an initial proposition put forth by me that is then picked up, responded to and developed by a group of close associates and collaborators.
I was back in the studio with Spring Awakening yesterday afternoon as Michael Meyer, its director, wanted one “number” to be at once more wild and simplified for two principal actors who feel they cannot do their work as they must concentrate on my choreography. In contrast, Chapel/Chapter offers me too much freedom right now.
In the musical theater the audience is given the greatest consideration with the narrative trimmed, pruned and illuminated by all the other elements so as to provide a firm vantage point, or point of reference, from which to experience it. In Chapel/Chapter as in all of my works, the points of entry are various and often at odds with one another.
I’ve arrived at that point in Chapel/Chapter that I always reach during the development of a new dance work when I feel the need to streamline, simplify and commit to a platform or point of view. And here is where working on two contrasting projects simultaneously becomes a strength and a risk. Chapel/Chapter’s solutions are not ultimately narrative ones. As my work life progresses, more and more do I look to Rauschenberg’s Combines of the 1960’s as my point of reference. There is a vision of disparate elements thrown together or willed into the same reluctantly framed two-dimensional space. Yes, I know, mine is a time-based art form: a four-dimensional experience. Pure will and audacity are certainly a required weapon in this fight, but not enough.
So the next few weeks are going to be curious and tough: watching Spring Awakening take its place on Broadway among all the razzle dazzle, hype and promotion while the company, our collaborators and I generate, arrange, rearrange, cut, paste our elements, striving to give physical form to a phantom. A lazy metaphor might be the bandages wrapped around the Invisible Man…
I have a question that runs like the plaintive, haunting, plain-song chant soprano Alicia Hall Moran has brought to Chapel/Chapter. However, unlike the judge’s line of questioning evoked by her singing, there is one question that holds so many others for me and that is: Which of these ways of working is the one I call “home”?
Stay tuned! Try to see them both!
-- Bill T. Jones (Thursday, November 2, 2006)
