By Kathy Valin

A great dance performance stays with you. In October, I saw Eric Bradley and Daniel Russell Kubert in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's 'Just You.' The two dancers enacted a relationship between two men that was intense and touching, one obviously representing a very sick person and the other functioning as a sort of caretaker in denial and finally, in grief. Seeing it just a month after Sept. 11 probably made it even more poignant, and I'm not ashamed to say it brought me to tears.

Even songs from 'Just You,' like 'Baby, It's Cold Outside,' 'Side by Side,' 'Just Me, Just You,' sung by Ray Charles and Betty Carter, are still evocative. Oddly enough, I saw the first version of Jones' choreography as performed at Contemporary Dance Theater's Dance Hall by Terry Creach and Stephen Koester. Of its creation, Jones remembers, 'Arnie and I were a duet. We were partners for many years. In 1993 Creach/Koester asked me to make them a duet in that style.

 

Bill T. Jones choreographed one of the year’s most memorable dance performances in Cincinnati.

'Arnie was gone' -- Zane died of AIDS in 1988 -- 'so I made Bill T. Jones' side of it, trying to recall what that intense partnership was like and the subtext of what was going on.'

In 1994, Jones' 'Still/Here' premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to explore and contemplate 'survival, life and art through dance and music.' Though I've not seen it, I remember the brouhaha it incited. In The New Yorker a famous critic decried the work as 'victim art' and announced she would not see it, much less review it, because some of the performers were 'terminally ill, and talked about it.' I'm not sure if she ever recanted.

Seeing the power of Jones' work (admittedly in this case, the two dancers despite their roles, were obviously not enacting their personal history) plus having lived through the past few months of history brought all this to mind.

If you live through terrible times, is it appropriate to mine your experiences for artistic expression? For me, 'Just You' was heartrending. It was also amazingly beautiful.

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True Believer (December 13, 2001)
Cincinnati Ballet hires new principal dancers (December 13, 2001)
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