This year’s guest for Conversations in the Arts and Ideas was the renowned dancer, choreographer, and director Bill T. Jones. Although his campus engagements did not include performances or workshops, physical movement animated his residency on March 2-3, 2022.
In a public talk at the Tsai Performance Center, Mr. Jones reflected on a remarkable career with his interlocutor, Professor Louis Chude-Sokei (EN, AFAM).
Together they explored what dance and the oral traditions of dance history can reveal about democracy, collaboration, citizenship, and authenticity. During the Q&A, it emerged that a number of audience members had been personally impacted by Jones, and at one point, he invited up on stage a dancer with whom he had once worked for an improvisational encounter in movement. Another audience member explained how Jones’s movie Still Here (1995) had given him courage, as someone who is HIV positive, to live.
The next morning, BU undergraduates, faculty, and staff joined Mr. Jones for conversation over breakfast. Encouraging students to express their ideas physically, Jones practiced what he preached through vigorous movement, shouting , touching, and even embracing those present, encouraging everyone to experiment courageously with motion.
Jones’s use of movement bridged the gap between performance and conversation. Dance performances can create distance between the audience and the dancers just as artists’ residencies can create distance between honored guest and students. Managing to infuse every moment of the breakfast with movement, Jones revealed his art as intrinsic to human connection and understanding.
Perhaps most moving of all was Jones’s account of coming of age as a gay Black man in the 1960s and 1970s. He avoided offering advice for navigating the challenges of marginalization, emphasizing instead how existing amid injustice becomes part of one’s identity and art. Jones employed his strong personality and deep-seated commitment to encourage students to engage with their own values. His desire to connect with those who approach his work with honest curiosity was evident. “I hope you are not here as an assignment,” he declared. “Oh how I hate to be an obligation.”
