“Notions of mortality never change,” Bill T. Jones recently told Observer. “We’re born, we grow and some of us will reproduce, and we will most certainly die. That is the human condition.” We were speaking about the themes embedded in Still/Here, his multimedia work that shook the dance theater world in 1994. Now, 30 years later, it will take the stage again where it first premiered, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of its Next Wave 2024 & Emerging Visions festival.
That the work is as relevant as ever comes down to its universality. “The grappling with mortality, it’s interesting,” Amy Cassello, BAM’s artistic director, said. “I think that’s why the piece is important to present. It’s something we all know and can’t escape, but it’s not intellectual. It’s emotional.” When asked why she chose to include a revival of a piece that caused quite the controversy among critics at its debut in Next Wave, a festival that usually centers experimental and forward-thinking voices, Cassello countered that Still/Here is timeless “because of the way it was constructed, in its vision and craft, and because it’s about the inevitability of death, which necessitates the celebration of life. That doesn’t go away. Thirty years ago, there was a specific challenge presented by AIDS. On the surface, we are emerging from a different pandemic, but in my mind, everything and nothing has changed.”
When Jones, co-founder and artistic director of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, first conceived of Still/Here, he imagined it would be a piece about the body and mortality. He’d lost his partner and companion Arnie Zane to AIDS in 1988 and was an HIV-positive man himself. But then he was challenged by a breast cancer survivor and activist to make a piece about breast cancer, and Still/Here grew in scope.
Between 1992 and 1994, Jones conducted thirteen workshops around the country with people living with life-threatening illnesses. He called them “Survival Workshops,” and his friend and artistic collaborator Gretchen Bender attended with him, recording them all on her video camera. “Because she was with me at all these locations,” Jones said, “the workshops took on something. A more heightened quality.” Some of the footage from the workshops is used in the performance, but more importantly, what they heard and saw in those sessions became the foundation of Still/Here.
That fueled the controversy. One critic (who refused to even see the piece) felt that Jones was creating “victim art” and “parading the wounds” of the dying, but those who attended the performance saw that this wasn’t the case. In the original Still/Here book from 1994, Jones wrote: “My intention since the onset of this project has been to create a work, not as a rumination on death and decline, but on the resourcefulness and courage necessary to perform the act of living.”
Observer spoke with Josie Coyoc, one of the original cast members of Still/Here, about the process of creating and performing the piece, which she called one of the best experiences of her life (“It was exhilarating. It was powerful. It was heartbreaking at points. It was my life.”).
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“I love that Bill is so incredibly honest and brave,” Coyoc said. “He comes up to you, and he basically asks, ‘How are you getting through this life? What are your secrets? What can you share with me, because I’m having a really hard time. What can I learn from you? What can I share with other people that will make this better for us?’ I have to say, I don’t know that I, even in my own life, feel like I can do that, but he does it every time he creates art.”
Coyoc said that Jones wanted, adamantly, to honor the people who were sharing their experiences in the workshops. He took their gestures very seriously. “It wasn’t just like, Oh, this is a handshake,” she explained. “It was, Why is this person shaking your hand the way they’re doing it? Was it weak? Was it strong? Was it assertive? Was it like a hug? Was it quick? Or, you know, did they hold on to your hand for a while? … He was making sure that we were distilling these very special people who had been sharing very intimate feelings about what they were going through.”
Several members of the original cast, including Coyoc, were invited to attend rehearsals with the new cast and answer any questions they might have. Hannah Seiden, the current dancer taking on Coyoc’s role, Survival Workshop participant Tawnni Simpson, asked how she had done a certain death-defying fall. Coyoc took her shoes off and said, “Well, let me show you!” She still remembered the movement she’d performed continuously for two years—“It’s in my DNA.”—so she climbed up on Seiden’s partner’s shoulders, saw spots and fell into his arms. “Dance is still almost like an ancient art,” she said, “in the sense that it is really transferred from body to body, in person. And I needed to feel what he was doing, if he was doing things right. And I needed Hannah to see what it looks like to do it in person.” Afterward, she talked with them. “I just said, ‘You absolutely must catch her. There can never be a doubt that you will make every effort to catch her.’”
This creates layers. The essence of the Survival Workshop participants can be felt on the stage, as well as that of the original cast members and the current cast members. Tawnni Simpson embodies Josie Coyoc, who embodied Hannah Seiden. “What you will see, in some ways,” Jones said, “are spirits that have transcended time and space.”
Jones is looking forward to the dancers having the experience of performing the piece in front of an audience, “a major audience,” and bringing Still/Here to a new generation. “I’m very art historically minded. I want people to know that they are part of the process now, something being transferred from one time to another, and you can feel it—the way of the piece is understood in my heart and, as a result, in this young company.”
“I think it’s going to be an exceptionally emotional experience,” Cassello said near the end of our conversation. “I don’t want to be hyperbolic about it, but it’s… it’s kind of extraordinary.”
Bender, who passed away in 2004, wrote in the original Still/Here book: “We hope the collaborative aspect of this work will accentuate the human body and spirit within its culture of visual and aural shadows—images and music that complement the dance, poignantly underscoring that we are “still here” and trying to comprehend what a gift that is.”
Still/Here, produced by New York Live Arts with lead support from Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and “Dance Reflections“ by Van Cleef & Arpels, will be at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House from October 30 through November 2.
