Looking for Lincoln
"Great distance in either time or space, has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind...."
Springfield, IL, February 22, 1842
A dance theater work about Mr. Lincoln as I conceive it comes with some obstacles. They might be roughly delineated by these two familiar categories: form and content. Formally, I remain suspicious of the biopic narrative and yet, if there was ever an individual and an era, which cried out for a narrative it is this man and that time. Over the last 25 years of creation I have often used elements of narrative that have - because of my bias - resulted in what I call quasi-narrative. An important notion I have relied on in the past and will certainly rely on again is that each piece and its various parts "suggests" rather than illustrates. In other words I set out to suggest a personality, to suggest a story, to suggest a world.
Now, after 35 years, learning, observing, thinking, making and showing, I have been offered the opportunity to create a work for the bicentennial of our greatest president - some say our greatest American - and his era. I told Welz Kaufman, the director of the Ravinia Festival which is commissioning this work, that I was going to "lead with my heart in the creation of this piece." I come here today with some excerpts from my first attempt at grappling with this problem, more precisely with grappling with history in the first of my Lincoln works called Serenade/The Proposition.
And here is another obstacle: If I accept even one element of conventional narrative such as having a performer identified as "Lincoln," what then?
And here I stop and say that my company is multi-racial, multi-ethnic. This is the result of a concerted effort on my part. Arnie Zane my co-founder and I decided long ago that we wanted to create a company, an environment, reflective of the world we wanted to live in, not the world as it exists. By this we meant that people would not be limited by their gender, race or ethnicity, in what they danced, how they danced or with whom they danced. We've had some success over the years in achieving color and gender blind casting so if I have decided to designate a Lincoln character, is he male or female? Is he a black or a white man?
Normally, I would push such concern aside and look for the most counter-intuitive choice. However, in a work that strives to reach a wide and varied audience, I might possibly be undermining the role of the protagonist in his vital function as an emotional center thru which the audience experiences the proceedings.
I might end up confusing and even alienating that audience. How much of this protagonist's personal life is germane to the project? What about Mr. Lincoln's racial feelings? What about his sexuality? What about Marie Todd and the four boys? What about his religious feelings? All the stuff of biography, all fascinating, but a veritable tar pit as one tries to do what dance does best: suggest, demonstrate thru space and gesture. But still, I am undecided.
The first formal choice I made as a way of bridging the gap between the abstraction of our dance-language and our subject, the man and his era was to use Lincoln's language, sometimes folksy, with biblical cadences or Shakespearean in its use of metaphor. This would be the ground on which we stand, or more accurately, dance.
Some time back in my process I thought the correct way around these problems was to discontinue trying to represent the narrative on stage, but - instead - abstract the feelings we, and most importantly I, have about this man and his time.
Yes, abstract the feelings. It was in this way, I thought, I could make the work I believe needs to be made. A work that answers the question what does Lincoln and his time reveal to us about ourselves? But are feelings enough? What about the ideas? And this is the biggest problem.
Aha! I thought... if I could just capture the flavor of a time with one or two of its truly big questions, then my alert contemporary audience would see our faults and strengths in this reflection and how far we have traveled or not... And this is where the study of history with all its fascination becomes my inspiration and my opponent. What were the "big questions" of that time available and relevant to us now?
• The power and reach of the president and of an ever more centralized government?
• Human rights and our founding documents?
• Slavery, race as litmus tests for these documents in a racially traumatized tradition?
• Who and what is a citizen and what are their rights and privileges?
• American exceptionalism?
And how - without it becoming a history lesson, a lecture - can these questions truly be art, not scholarship, and a mirror to us now? What should this work do? Of course as was true for the ancient Greeks, catharsis is always our goal, and what is catharsis? To stimulate and transport and yet to bring us back to the hard truth of our situation and ourselves.
I need a conceptual leap. In the studio of late, I've tried to embrace the volatile discourse, the clash of ideas, that lead Mr. Lincoln and his era to the bloodiest war ever fought on our soil. A war that ended with Lincoln's death and a great promise; a thwarted promise to be sure, that has delivered us the country we live in today. This is my struggle. This and more is what I am striving to achieve with the next work, Fondly Do We Hope, Fervently Do We Pray. But let's today give the final word to Brother Abraham himself:
"Great distance in either time or space, has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind...."
-- Bill T. Jones (Tuesday, May 5, 2009)
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