Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company: The Phantom Project- 20th Anniversary
May 20, 2005
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
Choreographer Bill T. Jones. Photo by Lois Greenfield.
Bill T. Jones, the fervid formalist triumphed over Bill T. Jones, the humanist and musician, Thursday (May 19) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, where the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company opened a three-day run, presented by San Francisco Performances. The program, to be repeated through Sunday afternoon, was long, challenging, and considering the occasion of the troupe's 20th birthday, respectful of both the past and present. The best of it came before the intermission with the revision of the 1978 Continuous Replay (choreographed originally by Zane, Joneslate partner) and the infinitely touching There Were..., which, I believe, has not been seen before in the Bay Area. The company, 10 strong (plus Jonesoccasional contributions), is a top notch dance machine, though the performers fall into two categories, very tall and or rather short, which lends a weirdly schematic quality to their performances.
But, after intermission, a pall descended and empty seats proliferated. Reading, Mercy and The Artificial Nigger (2003), a 45-minute reading and movement commentary on Flannery O'Connor's short story, "The Artificial Nigger," tried the patience long before it was over. The following Mercy 10 X 8 on a Circle (2003) deploys a great piece of music, Beethoven's 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C Minor, and then seems to ignore its structural imperatives as the dancers, in pairs (starting with Asli Bulbul and Malcolm Low), roll around the stage and thrust their limbs into the air. The rainstorm of falling confetti is nice but irrelevant.
What you cannot deny is the increasing technical mastery and 'faceof this multi-ethnic company, though, in this sampler, Joneschoreography leans to ensemble work and minimizes individual forays. For the 1989 restaging of Continuous Replay (this was the West Coast premiere of this version), the troupe was joined by 13 local dancers (including the youngest member of the cast, Monique Straussone-year-old son Zach). I still retain fond memories of the duet version, which Jones and Zane, who died in 1988, brought to ODC Theater decades ago. Yet this revision, in which everybody starts dancing nude and then indulges in a strip tease in reverse (only Erick Montes is left unclad at the end), compels the attention, too. There's nothing salacious about this accumulative work in which Jones/Zane unfurl a sequence of 45 hand and arm gestures cadenced by foot stamping and a complex series of entrances and exits. The patterning, as the group grows and recombines, remains pristine and airy. The music, performed live by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Akim Funk Buddha, starts with a shaky version of Le Sacre du printemps and soon incorporates other sources.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Photo by Lois Greenfield.
Jones calls Continuous Replay a structured improvisation, but the parameters seemed rigorously shaped on Thursday. Yet, the very exuberance of the movement - the skipping, the running, the sudden twists in the air, the stage crosses at the rear - almost lifts you from your seat.
Although Jones revised it in 2002, There Were... dates originally from 1993, when the AIDS epidemic was well on its way to decimating the dance community. The response here is deeply emotional, but never sentimental or manipulative. To John Cage's Six Melodies for Violin and Keyboard, we watch a society, which is huddled together at the beginning, simply waste away. Personal contact - affectionate tugs, friendly kisses - grows ever more fleeting, propelled by a mood of quiet panic. Entrances are slow. Showy moments, like the dancer stretching in pass', simply disintegrate. Jones talks a bit, in an understated manner. Lengthy silences provide tension. The discontinuous quality of the choreography - dancers moving in close proximity, but fearful of contact - brilliantly mirrors the anxiety of a group contemplating extinction. Rarely have Jonessocial concerns and his craft fused so brilliantly as in There Were... If the work was inspired by a specific crisis, Jones has invested it with a sense of abiding universality.
Not so the unwieldy Reading, Mercy and The Artificial Nigger. The piece was commissioned by the American Dance Festival and, perhaps, it should have remained festival fare, a special event work. Seated at opposite sides of the stage, Jones and his sister Rhodessa Jones blandly read O'Connor's story about a white man and a boy and the yooungster's first encounter with racism in the Deep South. Roumain has contributed a quietly effective score for piano and strings. Bjorn Amelan's design, which includes a mobile and metamorphosing moon at the rear, Liz Prince's business suits and Robert Wierzel's lighting all provide an apt setting for this fable.
Yet, Joneschoreography, which ranges from unisons to contorted duets, never achieves a satisfying relationship with the oral material, either as illustration or ironic counterpoint. Incidental pleasures abound. The boy Nelson's first, wary encounter with black people summons choreography fringed with suspicion. The travelers come upon an old, elaborate penny scale and the company freezes into a wondrous tableau (in which you can virtually see all that gingerbread). Jones, however, seems unable to sustain the invention, as the piece approaches the hour mark.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Photo by Lois Greenfield.
S.F. Performancesclassy founding director Ruth Felt provided live musicians throughout. In addition to Roumain and DJ Spooky, the players included violinists David Abel and Kate Steinberg, pianist Julie Steinberg (gripping in the Beethoven and Cage) and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud. First-class all the way.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, San Francisco.
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