Play and Play

Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major for Strings, Op. 20, D-Man in the Waters (1989, revised 1998) is Jones’s joyful tour de force and was recently reconstructed in full for the first time since 2002. The New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award-winning classic is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit that embodies loss, hope and triumph. The New York Times stated, “Rarely has one seen a dance company throw itself onto the stage with such kinetic exaltation,” and Financial Times raved that “D-Man in the Waters radiates the clarity of love.”
Spent Days Out Yonder (2001) is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, a meditation on the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The choreography is firmly rooted in Jones’s elegant, weighted movement vocabulary, paired with a sublime score performed live by a local string octet. As The New York Times states, “.it offers a clearer look at the tension between loose swing and angular articulation in Mr. Jones’s movement. It shows his skill in establishing a foreground and a background while letting them blend.”

Story/ is the latest result of the company’s continued investigation in using John Cage’s Indeterminacy as a choreographic tool. Following the model for the acclaimed Story/Time, the work employs a random menu of movement that is accompanied by Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden) to craft a conversation between the music and the movement.