Still/Here

30 years after its premiere, the groundbreaking dance theater work Still/Here by Bill T. Jones returns to the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. In its 42nd season, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company remounts this timeless “landmark of 20th-century dance”, underscoring its ongoing resonance with today and its ability to evoke a spirit of survival. Created during one of the most contentious and terrifying periods, the AIDS epidemic, Still/Here broke boundaries between the personal and the political and exemplified a form of dance theater that is uniquely American. In spite of its being at the center of the culture wars, or because of it, the highly formal multimedia work defined and ultimately transcended its era. In the intervening years, much has changed in the world. Though with another Pandemic behind us, wars raging, the planet failing, and technology rising, somehow the questions around mortality remain. 

The  highly formal structures of Still/Here are delivered with simplicity and sophistication, marked by spoken text, video portraits, dance and the abstract nature of gesture. Gretchen Bender’s visual concept and multimedia environment is joined by music from Kenneth Frazelle (sung by Odetta) and Vernon Reid. Long-time collaborators include Liz Prince (costumes) and Robert Wierzel (lighting). 
At the heart of Still/Here are the “Survival Workshops: Talking and Moving about Life and Death.”  These workshops were conducted across the country with people living with life-threatening illness. The participants living on the front lines of the struggle to understand our mortality are in possession of information – info possible of being a gift and a burden. The participants’ generosity of spirit and willingness to express their experience both with words and gestures was both inspiring and difficult. They are the essence of Still/Here: their gestures inform the choreography, their words the lyrics, their images the stage. They will always be Still/Here. This work is dedicated to them.