Bill T. Jones in The Windy City
Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones was in residence this past week at Columbia College Chicago where I currently teach. I had first seen Bill perform in New York in 1980 in a solo program at the late Hazel Bryant's Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art, located near Lincoln Center. Few outside of his immediate dance community had heard of Bill at that point, but word among the art community in NY was that he was someone to see. And so a group of us went to check him out. I've never forgotten Bill T. Jones from that moment on, and have followed him for almost three decades now. His performance that day heralded for me an introduction to a singular creative talent. While he and his late partner Arnie Zane went on to establish a company that was increasingly celebrated around the world, the charismatic Jones could clearly have commanded any stage with his individually compelling presence.
A week before his residency at Columbia I had gone to the premiere of A Good Man, a documentary that follows Jones and company from conception to the presentation of his Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray, which was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and filmed by Kartemquin Films, better known for their social documentaries, such as Hoop Dreams and Five Girls. The film is an intimate look at one artist's process as he struggles to shape a piece commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Watching A Good Man made me think back on Bill's history, and made want to reminisce with him about some of that history. So I was hoping to see him when he visited again. When I saw him the following week at Columbia College's Dance Center, we shared a few minutes one evening before he spoke with a group of dance students and his company performed. While reflecting on those long ago days when I had first seen him perform in New York, and what the ensuing years had wrought, our conversation turned to history, and how much of that history young students might or might not be aware of, and how that history might possibly inspire them...or not. How many of them, for example, were aware of that highly charged moment in 1994 when Bill staged "Still/Here," much to the public disfavor of one Arlene Croce, then the dance critic for New Yorker magazine? And what might it matter to them? And should it? Croce's article infamously began, "I have not seen Bill T. Jones's "Still/Here" and have no plans to review it." She then goes on, "Don't go. In not reviewing "Still/Here" I am sparing myself and my readers a bad time, and yet I don't really see that I have much choice."Before expended several thousand words about this performance she had no intentions of seeing, Croce attempts to defend the critical farce she is about to undertake. "A critic has three options: (1) to see and review; (2) to see and not review; (3) not to see. A fourth option - to write about what one has not seen becomes possible on strange occasions like "Still/Here," from which one feels excluded by reasons of its express intentions..."
Croce then goes on to dismiss this work, coining the phrase "victim art," and derisively asserting that in bringing the real world--the world in which people confront, in various ways, their own mortality--to the stage Jones had committed a aesthetic sin: drawing a vivd and provocative connective line between the world as lived and the world as transformed into subjective expressive material...as if all art doesn't do this in some way. But Croce loudly lamented the manipulation which she herself would not be suckered into: "There's no doubt that the public like to see victims, if only to patronize them with applause," she dismissively opined. She then goes on to lambast, "dissed blacks, abused women, or disenfranchised homosexuals" for daring to think that their lives are worthy of finding their way into any arena other than the merely pathological.
The article became a critical flashpoint, raising a host of issues regarding the relationship of art practice and the larger society, and how those two could (or should not) intersect. For someone like Bill T. Jones, who had up until that moment been lauded as a breakthrough dancer and choreographer and dancer nationally and internationally it had to come as a rude awakening. Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company had by then become an institution within the dance world, with laudatory reviews being more the norm. New York Times then dance critic Jennifer Dunning wrote, of a 1988 performance by the company, "The dances looked elegant and effervescent...The choreography has always had an unusually strong visual element and theatricality. Its suppressed heat did not dissipate on this expansive stage." Collaborations with rising art stars such as Keith Haring has further raised the company's profile, giving it even greater cachet. But then along came Arlene Croce.
All of this was on my mind as I sat with Bill at Columbia's Dance Center, contemplating the young dance students populating the building, and wondering how many knew this piece of history. Each generation, of course, makes its own history. But how to make use of history's lessons if one doesn't know it? Which is why it is so important to revisit those defining moments, those moments when a deeply meaningful conversation took place. How much of history belongs to those who lived it, and how much belongs to all of us? Without viewing history as a set of instructions, it can provide valuable perspective, reassurances even. For some young artist (dancer or otherwise) who might be thinking of embarking on an ambitious path of pursuing work that some might find less than palatable, knowing that the battle has been at least partly fought (if not completely won) can afford some reassurance, some much needed validation.
One has only to look at recent controversies around the "Hide/Seek" exhibition at the Smithsonian, and the ways in which this exhibition was attacked, sight unseen, by opportunistic politicians turned self appointed censors and critics, to know that forward looking art is always suspect in some quarters. Young artists do indeed need to know these histories. And those of us who were present at the scene, and know that history firsthand, need to periodically step forward and voice it, and do our jobs as custodians of that history, lest it and its lessons be lost on a new generation. Our failure to keep these various crises present in the social and conversations makes the arts community continually vulnerable each tike a new threat rears its head. In that regards we are still, sadly, without a coherent script--or compelling response--as to why the larger public should care when we are attacked.
Jeanette Ingberman, R.I.P
When Jeanette Ingberman passed away this past August at the age of 59, we lost a real visionary. Along with her husband and creative partner, artist Papo Colo, Ingberman created the now venerable institution Exit Art in 1982. Weathering the many storms of change, the duo kept the institution viable through three relocations, managing to stay one step ahead of New York's economic and real estate juggernaut to build and grow an institution that by now has probably benefitted hundreds of artists, if not thousands. Consistently exhibiting those established artists whose works did not neatly fit the market driven economy of the art world, as well as those emerging artists with few viable exhibition opportunities, or those making work that was explicitly political in nature, Exit Art became an essential and imperative institution. Not content to continue working at other institutions (including the International Center of Photography and the Bronx Museum) and perhaps rise through the ranks, Ingberman harbored a more ambitious and less orthodox vision.
That she and Colo were able to grow that vision over three decades is ample testimony to their creative and institutional savvy, and their ability to get others to share their vision and make it--and the institution--their own. Plenty of people bitch about what is wrong with the mainstream art world, and how much of a seemingly closed shop it can sometimes appear to be. Fewer are willing and able to craft an institutional answer and solution to that conundrum and pose a viable alternative. Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo together did that...and fabulously. All of those mainstream museums and institutions that have belatedly come to embrace "diversity" in their exhibition programming have Exit Art to thank for showing them the way early on. Thank you for being a fabulous visionary Jeanette. We will all miss your presence, but continue to be inspired by your vision. May our continued work on behalf of others honor your memory.
Photographs (from the top): Bill T. Jones © Getty Images; Promotional poster, "A Good Man" courtesy of Kartemquin Films; "Still/Here" © Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company; Keith Haring and Bill T. Jones photograph © Tseng Kwong Chi; Courtesy Columbia College Chicago Dance Center; Book cover, "Hide/Seek" courtesy Smithsonian Institutions; Jeanette Ingberman photograph courtesy Walter Robinson, Artnet
View comments