Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: Healing with Bill T. Jones' Still/Here

Company:
Arnie Zane Dance Company

Performance Date:
November 1st. 2024

Freeform Review:

Bill T. Jones’ Still/Here, staged on the Arnie Zane Company provides a raw and captivating account of human illness. Though it’s premiere 30 years ago was met with major controversy, the complexities of the work do not just echo the distant cries of the AIDS epidemic. Rather, audiences are thrust into the reality that sickness is inescapable and intertwined in everyone’s life in some way. This performance in BAM’s Peter J Sharp Building and the Howard Gilman Opera house, sets the stage for Bill T. to open a wound in the most immersive way possible. The incorporation of video mediums, photographs and spoken word thread throughout the work

The choreography remarkably takes the viewer into how illness can change the way that one occupies the space around them and in relation to others. For instance in the first “act”/white section, the dancers and music build the feeling of being in a hospital. Most of the dancers are not moving while one or occasionally two are dancing by shifting their balance in a slow but erratic way intentionally to evoke a sense of unsteadiness. This slightly uncomfortable movement and arrested motion accompanied by the  creaky string notes sounding like wheels on a hospital bed builds an entire scene. In doing this, one is enraptured by the suggested sick one feeling alone but also the frustration of the loved one who feels as though they are unable to do anything that helps. All of this is replicated throughout many sections of the work.

In the second red “act” the same motif appears as the dancers run across the stage while one person stays in the middle holding an impressive balance on relevé that makes watchers hold their breath. There is a sense of resolve as the dancers who are running across stage begin to accompany the solo dancer to also move upstage in slow relevé balances. While this expresses a hopeful sense of community support that suggests no one is alone in their battle through health issues, it is immediately followed by completely different sections. This bait and switch of resolution is a stellar expression for the reality that is how humans cope with illness. Healing is not linear in many cases and Bill T. expresses the highs and lows by having motifs exiting and returning and exiting in different ways again and again.

The entire night's work builds both away and into a sense of community. However, regarding the work as such also ignores the layers of complexity that exist within this idea of a collective. Duets shrouded in single spotlights all occurring on the stage next to each other or group circles with everyone physically looking at or touching one another are accompanied by solos or dancers that aimlessly wander or run about the stage. Even the audience at one point is included as the flashlight illuminating dancers on the stage, all of a sudden turns and blinds the audience. The experience calls everyone to forcibly recognize their place in the cycle of life and how our vulnerability to death brings all humans together. It also demands a level of recognition for the many different methods of soothing and coping with this harsh reality no one is truly safe from. 

The existence of hope as expressed through movement is undoubtedly on display in the night’s work. Bringing physical movement to the recorded words of the video workshop participants is almost cathartic.

Author:
LB