P4M ANTI-REVIEW: Bill T. Jones's You Walk? (Lincoln Center Festival)
Modern dance icon Bill T. Jones has said that his new work, You Walk?, "strives to stay clear of polemics," even while it is, like much of his previous work, "informed by a myriad of historical facts, ideological conflicts, political tragedies, serendipitous ironies, and significant innovations." And it's true that You Walk?, a full-evening work that had its New York premiere last week at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, does feel more a product of Jones the big-hearted poetic formalist than of Jones the pissed-off ideologue who is always railing against racism, homophobia, AIDS apathy, and the rest.
Generously showcasing the individual qualities of his dancers, who are of widely different shapes and ethnic backgrounds, Jones sets You Walk? to a series of musical selections reflecting the influence of Latin culture in the New World-- everything from the indigenous music of native peoples (as in Southern Africans and Amazon Indians, as well as medieval Europeans, meaning the Spanish) to "the music of cultures in collision and conquest" (as in a propagandistic opera promoting a conqueror's values, written during the Baroque era by a Jesuit missionary). Though You Walk? was a thrillingly successful piece of dance theater, we're going to be polemical ourselves, in this instance, and decline to review the work-- for the simple reason that we didn't get press comps.
Platform staff is invited to tons of events every day, by marketers and press reps who understand how culture is moving and how Platform's growing audience helps drive that movement. We never take our entree for granted; we feel, rather, that it's our deepest journalistic responsibility to go to events, think about them carefully, and report back to you, our viewers. It's because we believe that so many of Jones's politico-artistic concerns are resonant with yours that we were disappointed when the Festival denied our request for review tickets-- and why, moreover, we question Jones's uncomplaining participation in the Festival. OK, he must accept the fact that it's gonna cost people $38 to see You Walk? at Lincoln Center; that's economics. But must he also endorse a marketing and publicity plan that's all about selling out houses and hardly at all about expanding the critical context for his work and widening the audience for it?
The Lincoln Center Festival, though in many ways brilliantly executed by career arts administrator Nigel Redden and lavishly sponsored by Bloomberg, Lexus, AT&T, Philip Morris, and Time Warner, comes close to embodying certain "conquerors' values" that Jones has always abhorred. Its primary goal, rather than to help culture move forward, seems to be to score as many of those embarrassingly predictable New York Times arts features as possible and to use them to hook up auditoriumfuls of Times addicts with edgey-feeling art that's nonetheless corporately approved. That's one reason why critics continue to gripe about "the structural smugness of big arts festivals"-- and why some Bill T. Jones fans fear the choreographer is headed for a commercially viable revival production of Cats for the Lincoln Center Festival of 2010, to be performed for a uni-cultural audience whose median age is 62.
Generously showcasing the individual qualities of his dancers, who are of widely different shapes and ethnic backgrounds, Jones sets You Walk? to a series of musical selections reflecting the influence of Latin culture in the New World-- everything from the indigenous music of native peoples (as in Southern Africans and Amazon Indians, as well as medieval Europeans, meaning the Spanish) to "the music of cultures in collision and conquest" (as in a propagandistic opera promoting a conqueror's values, written during the Baroque era by a Jesuit missionary). Though You Walk? was a thrillingly successful piece of dance theater, we're going to be polemical ourselves, in this instance, and decline to review the work-- for the simple reason that we didn't get press comps.
Platform staff is invited to tons of events every day, by marketers and press reps who understand how culture is moving and how Platform's growing audience helps drive that movement. We never take our entree for granted; we feel, rather, that it's our deepest journalistic responsibility to go to events, think about them carefully, and report back to you, our viewers. It's because we believe that so many of Jones's politico-artistic concerns are resonant with yours that we were disappointed when the Festival denied our request for review tickets-- and why, moreover, we question Jones's uncomplaining participation in the Festival. OK, he must accept the fact that it's gonna cost people $38 to see You Walk? at Lincoln Center; that's economics. But must he also endorse a marketing and publicity plan that's all about selling out houses and hardly at all about expanding the critical context for his work and widening the audience for it?
The Lincoln Center Festival, though in many ways brilliantly executed by career arts administrator Nigel Redden and lavishly sponsored by Bloomberg, Lexus, AT&T, Philip Morris, and Time Warner, comes close to embodying certain "conquerors' values" that Jones has always abhorred. Its primary goal, rather than to help culture move forward, seems to be to score as many of those embarrassingly predictable New York Times arts features as possible and to use them to hook up auditoriumfuls of Times addicts with edgey-feeling art that's nonetheless corporately approved. That's one reason why critics continue to gripe about "the structural smugness of big arts festivals"-- and why some Bill T. Jones fans fear the choreographer is headed for a commercially viable revival production of Cats for the Lincoln Center Festival of 2010, to be performed for a uni-cultural audience whose median age is 62.
posted by Lucia Toledo at 9:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home