PROMO VIDEO PRODUCED BY THE BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson this ain’t. Bill T. Jones’ 2008 choreographic musing on the Civil War puts an emphasis on civility.
Confrontation is not the choreographic goal here. Dancers slide past and around each other. They fuse and release. Communities are formed, then torn asunder through subtle, sensual movements. Instead of daggers, we get glares. Instead of victory yells, we get awkward handshakes. Bloodthirsty audience members will have to settle for the red sashes worn by the some of the dancers.
The decorum and composure is disarming, and more fraught with tension that the most acrobatically staged weapon-wielding battle might have been. Bill T. Jones isn’t concerned with surface violence. He understands the emotional core of what could bring a country—or its individuals—to self-destruction. Events are played out not on battlefields butin front of austere white pillars.
A RARE SOLO MOMENT FROM SERENADE/THE PROPOSITION. PHOTO BY PAUL B. GOODE.
Even the rousing recitations of writings by Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Clement Sullivane are softened through being voiced primarily by the mezzo-soprano Lisa Komara, who also transforms “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” from the plodding doom-march cliché it’s become into a splendiferous operatic release. Komara composed sections of Serenade/Proposition’s widespread score, which also features compositions by Jerome Begin, Christopher Antonio and William Lancaster. Komara’s more mellifluous readings are balanced by the deeper tones of actor Jamyl Dobson. Since the vocal bits are delivered from podiums at each side of the wide Yale University Theater stage, they have the air of modern political speechmaking, though even the proclamations excerpted from actual speeches and lectures have a warmth and humanity to them.
The only overblown elements of Serenade/Proposition is the occasionally tacky video design by Janet Wong. Portraits of Civil War soldiers projected onto the stage’s imposing pillars are merely obvious; a tacky backdrop image in which the White House has flames erupting from every window is too much.
Yet you could have bullets flying in the auditorium and this would still be an austere and beautiful dance event. Bill T. Jones truly fits the Arts & Ideas ideal of big ideas made accessible to summer audiences. The esteemed choreographer/conceptualizer was a part of one of the first Arts & Ideas festivals in the mid-1990s and has made a grand return with an eye-opening discussion at last year’s festival and now the one-two, uh, not a punch of Body Against Body and Serenade/Proposition.
Whether it concerns death from AIDS, quarreling grown-up siblings, culture clashes or the Civil War, Jones’ work (which continues to produced under the combined names of Jones and his late partner Arnie Zane) uses dance not as a full-bodied bludgeon but as a fluid method of connecting music, oration, video, history and sociopolitical urges into a grand, understandable statement that shows us danger and devastation but also shows us how we can maintain our cool and persevere.
Serenade/The Proposition has one final performance at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, 5 p.m. June 25 at the Yale University Theater, 222 York St., New Haven. www.artidea.org.