D-Man in the Waters: 1st movement (1989)
This Bessie-award-winning work is a genuine classic of modern dance, timelessly engaging. Intelligent, driven, athletic, and joyous, D-Man in the Waters is a challenging work for professional dancers and a challenge to advance the skills of collegiate-level students. A string octet may accompany this work as a live music option.
Choreographer: Bill T. Jones
Music: Felix Mendelssohn
Cast size: 9-10 (based on 5 men and 4 women or equal divisions of both)
Length: 17 minutes
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Skills developed:
- • Cultivating athleticism and stamina
- • Performing full-bodied and high-impact partnering
- • Musicality
- • Understanding and embodying movement/choreography created from personal history/events
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Complementary classes:
- • Technique/movement investigation focusing on moving in and out of the floor with momentum and force
- • Partnering
- • Chorography with a focus on creating movement and gesture from personally relevant moments/history
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Recently reconstructed at:
- • Muhlenberg College
- • Southern Methodist University
- • University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
- • University of Wisconsin-Madison
- • Boston Conservatory
– Cathy Young, Dance Division Director, Boston Conservatory
“You are changing these students’ lives. They can't stop talking about the process they are engaged in with you and they are even dancing differently in class. I can't thank you enough.”
– Kiesha Lalama-White, Assistant Professor, Point Park University
Download D-Man in the Waters: Reflections, Observations, Histories by Neil Baldwin
