People, Places, and Things

Bill T. Jones wriggles upstage on his back in a rectangle of light, reciting an unsent letter to the New York Times dance critic Jack Anderson. The occasion: in 1983 Jones was invited by Alvin Ailey to create a work for the company. The resulting commission, “Fever Swamp,” was a departure for Jones, who found himself interested in the dancers’ ability and pure joy of movement. Anderson, on the other hand, derided Jones for the lack of daring, social commentary he had come to expect in Jones’ work.

Performance

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: “Curriculum III: People, Places, and Things” / “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin…The Un-Ailey”

Place

New York Live Arts, New York, NY, May 15, 2025

Words

Candice Thompson

Bill T. Jones in “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin . . . the un-Ailey?” Photograph by Maria Baranova, courtesy New York Live Arts

Anderson wrote: “Nevertheless, for all its snap and crackle, it was possible to be slightly disappointed in ''Fever Swamp'' because it contained more fever than moral fervor. Mr. Jones is usually bold and occasionally bitter in the dances he makes for his own company. However, for the Ailey, he devised a bright showpiece to display some fine male dancers.”

Challenging the rafters, in lieu of Anderson, Jones asks, “Do you require more moral fervor of Merce Cunningham?” The pointed question a reminder of the various tones of racism Jones, Ailey, and many other choreographers of color confronted in their reviews from white critics in the mainstream press.

But this chippy moment in “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin…The Un-Ailey,” is not simply a register of complaint. It is a message of personal empowerment, one younger artists may want to keep in their back pocket:

“I am not obliged to repeat myself, Jack.”

This sentiment was a sizzling undercurrent throughout the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company home season at New York Live Arts where repetition often led to formal innovation and emotional intensity. Both the “Mr. Ailey,” solo and the full company production “Curriculum III: People, Places, and Things,” were conceptual rebuttals to familiar ground as automatic or stale. Jones may not wish to repeat himself, but he knows how to use that choreographic tool to speak his present mind and generate greater pathos in his dances.

Bill T. Jones in “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin…the un - Ailey?” Photograph by Maria Baranova, courtesy New York Live Arts

“Mr. Ailey,” follows a score that brings the audience members in as confidantes through a series of memories and ephemera: alternating anecdotes, relayed with eye contact and a conspiratorial flair, with more straightforward journal entries, notes, snippets of reviews, and letters from the past that give context to the when, where, and how Jones and Ailey crossed each other’s path. Jones appears completely at ease, arms swinging, hips circling, voice commanding, as he looks back on his relationship to the choreographic giant.

Whether recounting an appointment with Ailey overlooking a kidney-shaped pool in Los Angeles or mimicking the master choreographer’s stern warning to him, “Don’t hurt my boys Bill,” or playfully teasing an audience member with an infamous list of postmodern rules from Yvonne Rainier, it is affecting to experience the generational divide that kept the two men from fully knowing each other despite, as Jones notes near the end, how they both tried to understand the distinctions between “equality and freedom, creativity and spirituality, the past and history.”

While “Mr. Ailey,” is an intimate reflection of the intersections of Jones and Ailey, “Curriculum III,” takes on more global themes of migration, colonization, and immigration. Yet in both, the personal is never more than a gesture away from the political.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in “Curriculum III: People, Places & Things.” Photograph by Maria Baranova, courtesy New York Live Arts

Each performer in “Curriculum III” wrote and spoke text about how their family came to be American. Unsurprisingly, some of these foundational stories feel like myths as they tell of escapes, great loves, convenient marriages, mercenaries, and property acquired under dubious circumstances. No matter the circumstance, each performer is firm in their certainty when it comes to the reprise: “I am an American.”

Janet Wong’s ominous video design accompanies each solo moment with the concrete details of identity: a passport-style photo alongside a list of name, age, gender, race, and ethnicity. The brevity and cold simplicity of the projected document contrasts text that overflows with complications. The melting pot is on display here, but the process of mixing, of being mixed, isn’t smooth. Barrington Hinds wrestles with feeling compelled to choose between identities, concluding after multiple tries, “this confusion, it’s American,” with a sharp snap of a folding chair; Hannah Seiden wonders about her family’s diminished American dreams while she performs a steady gymnastics routine; Jacoby Pruitt muses about his Afro-Portuguese family of dreamers and their improbable journey from Cape Verde to Brockton, MA. When Pruitt’s story ends, a battle over a trench coat begins.

Belongings play an important role in the group sections that weave all these individual stories together: backpacks, roller bags, totes, a crocheted piece of red fabric, jackets. Sometimes the group moves like friends and lovers headed to a vacation—Jada Jenai and Huiwang Zhang slow dancing amidst the bustle—and other times, their displacement devolves into a melee as personal property is torn from each other’s bodies. More than once, Rosa Allegra Wolff, finds themself in the fetal position cradling a crocheted piece of red fabric, a family heirloom they have rescued from grasping hands and a very athletic duet.

The action is caught on camera and projected back to us. The layering of multiple angles and frames, and sometimes, the ensemble in triplicate, is a striking reminder of the constant surveillance surrounding our movements, no matter the status of our documents. In an interval when the Supreme Court is about to rule on whether we are still guaranteed birthright citizenship via the 14th amendment, Wong’s design is even more unsettling, and the very concept of the production becomes more kaleidoscopic.

Huiwang Zhang in “Curriculum III: People, Places & Things.” Photograph by Maria Baranova, courtesy New York Live Arts

Rather than simply accumulate toward a whole, the how-I-came-to-be-an-American format swerves to its climax, in a final monologue from Huiwang.

Huiwang is an incredibly liquid mover, and his finesse often draws my eye. Here, he hides himself in his hoodie and glides in a moonwalk—what could be more American? And yet, he stops to look up at a sign in Chinese characters, and tells us,” I’m not American.”

We move on from the other performers’ family lore to his first-person singular account of failing TOEFL exams and waiting in long visa lines, before ultimately, finding a stage, here, in America. He plays with his disclaimer to let us know he is not an American, “but his kids are,” and finally, he is not an American, ” . . . yet.”

From this cliff of hopeful expectation, Jones’ structure is shredded, with phrases from each monologue splicing together and overlapping as the migrating group frays. After a frantic grappling their voices coalesce, shouting “HELL NO!” with no one screaming louder than Jones himself, from his seat in the audience. Playing with iterations of sound, Pruitt grabs a pesky drone out of the air and says, “No.” Danielle Marshall sings softly while Hinds tries a softer, “Hello?”

Jones reflects on history as a kind of civic duty or PSA, perhaps so that we might not repeat it. Or so that critics might question the biases of their expectations from artists; so future generations of artists might feel they can bridge the professional personal divide when they hold so many “shared impulses and feelings,” as Jones and Ailey did; so that Americans might one day be able to fully appreciate and acknowledge that we are a nation of immigrants; so that we might be strong enough to scream “HELL NO,” to divisiveness and yet still leave ourselves vulnerable enough for a, “HELLO.”

Or to put it another way, in Jones’ own curt words to the audience after curtain calls on opening night, “Don’t be a puppet!”

Candice Thompson

Candice Thompson has been working in and around live art for over two decades. She was a dancer with Milwaukee Ballet before moving into costume design, movement education and direction, editing and arts writing. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduated from St. Mary’s College LEAP Program, and later received an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. From 2010-2021 she was editorial director of DIYdancer, a project-based media company she co-founded. Her writing on dance can be found in publications like Andscape, ALL ARTS, ArtsATL, The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Magazine, and The New York Times.

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