Bill T. Jones

Last Friday, I got to see Bill T. Jones' newest work, Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray, at UNC-Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall.  It was a grand work, large and far-reaching, with the life and meaning of Abraham Lincoln at its heart.  It was such a complex work, with so many strands of meaning and question and possibility that it really deserved an essay, but I didn't have the time or brainspace for that.  Here's a paragraph from my review for World Dance Reviews:

"As the lights go to black, faint sounds, far-away bits of melodies, fragments of voices murmur through the auditorium.  Down the dark aisle comes Clarissa Sinceno, singing, guiding us with her lantern into the world of the dance.  A misty white curtain encircles the stage, glowing behind the tall silhouette that strides across its curving surface, a stovepipe hat clutched behind his back.  A long, African-American woman stands alone on a smaller, circular platform that presses slightly into the audience.  As she dances, a list of body parts is read aloud, moving from the top of the head down to the bones of the feet, and every joint and hollow along the way.  Does this list assemble or dissemble her?  Her movement is lyrical, mostly soft, but disjointed.  Her arms, like an extended embrace, reach away from the twist and lean of her body.   We will hear this accounting of body parts again—during a slave auction, as a man dances trapped in a circle of columns—and again—during the section called “The War,” a litany of broken bodies and fighting limbs."

Read the whole review here.

If you have the opportunity to see the work, I recommend it.  I haven't stopped thinking about it since Friday.