"Serenade/The Proposition"
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Joyce Theater
New York NY
November 13, 2009
by Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2009 by Carol Pardo
How, having been commissioned to do so, can one honor the bicentennial fo the birth of Abraham Lincoln in dance? Bill T. Jones' answer in "Serenade/The Proposition" is to throw a hefty portion of the current theatrical arsenal at the topic: sets, costumes, lighting, video, live music, the spoken word both live and recorded, song and dance. Many of the production values quite consciously blend aspects of past and present. The piece begins on a stage decorated with a row of six smooth columns whose disposition brings to mind the facade of the LIncoln Monument. They are set on a white floor cloth and flanked by two podiums. The whole is bathed in a ghostly gray light. The clean lines and cool neutral tones are reminiscent of an ad for Calvin Klein Home. Only the twisted wires of the mikes on the podiums hint at sinuosity or disorder.
The dancers enter in small groups wearing sleek updates of practice wear, with welcome accents in saturated colors. Two basic components of the dance's vocabulary are quickly established. Broad, sweeping extensions of the legs on flat foot are contrasted with (and reined in by) tight jumps or poses with the feet fully stretched. The dancers have uniformly articulate feet (one wonders if they are hired on the quality of their arches) so the juxtaposition reads across with particular force. The second motif gathers the dancers together in a group pose which defines the central axis of the depth of the stage. The mass of bodies resembles a pediment either viewed from side to side rather than head on, or one whose elements have been chopped up and recombined, a modern, or perhaps post-modern, treatment of an ancient architectural element.
The lights go down. The columns are moved out from the wall into space; we are passing from the Lincoln Monument to Jefferson's. The dancer Paul Matteson comes out wearing the legal minimum and is dressed among the columns in a costume which nods both to a uniform worn for the duration of the Civil War and to some of the more sliced and diced looks from the runways of New York, London, Paris or Milan. The belt is blood red duct tape. The women appear in costumes which reflect the silhouette of the 1860's but with skirts which let one see and feel the velocity and power of their movements.
Like the costumes, the stage picture grows more complex while blending then and now. Videos of sepia-tones photographs of cityscapes, gutted by war, are projected against the back of the stage. Sometimes they, in turn, are awash in the colors of fire or of blood. The actor Jamyl Dobson stands at one podium, reciting the words of Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the choreographer himself among others. From the opposite podium, Lisa Komara echos those words or adds her own commentary, sung. Slowly the realization dawns that the video has taken over the show. The stage seems flat as a computer monitor. The dance has become diffuse. Everything we need to know, or can learn, through dance is communicated early on. As the three-dimensional, human presence of the dancers fades, what remains resembles a Web site full of the latest bells and whistles, but distant and lacking immediacy and therefore life. Maybe that's history according to "Serenade/The Proposition."
