In the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, afterwardsness is “a mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of sexual or traumatic meaning to earlier events… “
Jettisoning the sexual component and emphasizing the notion of “trauma”, this awkward though evocative term comes very close to describing Bill T. Jones’ state of mind when offered a commission to create a socially-distanced work at this particular collective moment. In some...
“Pip saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.”
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Bill T. Jones, Janet Wong, and The Bill T....
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company 40th Anniversary Season Fall 2022 National Tour
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s latest work What Problem? provokes the tension between belonging to a community and feelings of isolation that many feel during these divisive political times. Adapted for proscenium stages from the massive work, Deep Blue Sea (2021)*, Jones conceived of this highly personal work in pursuit of the elusive “we” including a cast of local community members, a deconstructed...
Curriculum refers to an interactive system of instruction and learning with specific goals, contents, strategies, measurement and resources, typically associated with a young person in an academic setting. What do young people need to know to be free in today’s society? And why make another dance-theatre work? This question is always at the front of Bill T. Jones’ mind any time he begins a new creative process. In Curriculum, Jones...
