Bill T. Jones

It’s no wonder choreographer Bill T. Jones has latched onto German artist Kurt Schwitters as the inspiration for one of his latest dance works. Schwitters survived the collapse of Germany after World War I, and created his art from discards retrieved from street gutters and trash bins. “I value sense and nonsense alike,” Schwitters wrote in 1928. “I favor nonsense, but that is a personal matter.”

Putting sense aside is a welcome change for Bill T. Jones. His companion and the founding partner of his dance company, Arnie Zane, died of AIDS in 1988; Jones himself was diagnosed HIV positive in 1985. From his grief over Zane’s death, Jones produced a tour-de-force performance, 1990’s “Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land,” which took on big issues like race, sexuality and religion. He won a MacArthur grant and was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Then, two years ago, Arlene Croce, the highly respected, long-time New Yorker dance critic, attacked Jones newly premiered “Still/Here” in what is surely the most talked about art tract of the decade. Croce, who had not seen “Still/Here,” called the work, which features taped interviews of people living with terminal illness, “victim art.” This set off a firestorm of letters to the editor, set up a war between critics and kindled a new debate about what is and isn’t art.

For his part, Jones, now 44, stood by “Still/Here,” which just ended a short run at the Irvine Barclay Theater. He wrote an autobiography, “Last Night On Earth,” which chronicled his upbringing in an almost all-white town in upstate New York, detailed his years with Zane and explained his theories about art and creativity. Jones believes the turmoil he’s experienced, including coming to terms with his race and his sexuality, is the engine that fires his passion to create. But his recent work, such as “Ursonate,” based on the nonsense poem by Schwitters, has taken on a more joyful tone. Still, Jones has not grown shy of controversy, and is quick to hammer at his critics--and occasionally even himself.

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Question: You often speak about the conflicting voices inside your head, the multiple worlds you live in and the difficulty of sorting it all out. Is that personal conflict integral to creativity?

Answer: An artist does have to confront the fact that they are an artist, and they are human, a man or a woman, and they live in a particular world, and that world has dimensions. Are they black, are they white, are they young, old, rich, poor, are they Italian or Asian, where do they come from? If that artist is striving for truth, then each one of those answers is going to beg for more answers.

Here are some of my answers. I was born in 1952, I am a product of the optimism that came after the Second World War. I am also a product of the deep bitterness and sadness that came from the civil-rights struggle. I am a gay person who carries my own particular chip on the shoulder, because many of us feel that we are still trying to fight for validity in this world.

And here are some of my questions: What voice do I suppress, in order to be a good business person? In order to make the toughest art I can make? In order to win over people? In order to be proud of myself as a citizen of the country, of the world? All of these voices have to be listened to in their turn. Often they’re in deep conflict with each other.

Q: Then do you believe that artists find their best work within this kind of personal turmoil? And would that make contentment the artist’s enemy?

A: When I do make good art I think it has to do with a tension that’s inside of it. The craft is one level in which the viewer sees the work. Then there’s another level where you sense the sincerity, the authenticity, the heat of the work. That’s the mysterious thing. I recall the story of the critic who received Marcel Proust’s novel in the mail, and didn’t even open it. He knew it was the work of a dandy-around-town, an upper-class, pampered boy. The critic assumed Proust couldn’t possibly make any art because he had no conflict in his life. So I think we always have to be careful, when we look at a life that seems tranquil, without conflict. Can that person make good art? I think, of course he can. Art comes from places that cannot begin to understand.

Q: Reading the accounts of your new work, I see words like humor, playful, joyful. Did you make a conscious decision to lighten up a little?

A: You know the voices we were talking about, they all have their appetites. After I had made “Still/Here,” and been very loyal to it, I had a desire to create movement pure and simple. That’s why I first began to dance; it was the love of the movement. So get back in the studio, William. Get back into your body, get back into your sweat. This is what you love.

I remembered going through my grieving period, and being asked how do you survive grief and loss? I’d say isolate what you love, and go and pursue that with everything you’re worth. For me, that is my company. The company is a voracious, hungry thing that needs to be fed, needs new material, needs new direction. New people are coming in, they need to be brought into my universe, and no better way to do that than through introducing them to the latest ideas I have in my body about what movement is.

I also began working with a young woman [choreographer Darla Villani] that I had just met and didn’t know. I wanted to feel still capable of making a friend--not just having a new idea, but making a friend. I’ve always had the best luck when I’m in collaboration and dialogue with people . . . . She and I worked on this piece together, through letters and faxes and sharing material. It served a lot of healing purposes and it came up with an interesting work for the company--unlike anything we’ve done before.

Q: Let’s move to the question of what is in bounds or out of bounds in terms of creativity and art. Your work has attracted a firestorm of criticism, yet there are many examples of people who have done similar things in their quest to make art--

A: More extreme things, I think.

Q: What are some examples?

A: If you think of a work like “Dionysus 69,” that’s a pretty wild example, where people were literally in your face in the audience, complaining about the fact that they were limited by their passports, or they needed money. Or an artist right now who is completely changing her face and her body through plastic surgery. Through satellite hook-ups, she projects her operations--while they are going on--into galleries around the world, as she’s molding her mouth into that of the Mona Lisa, and her eyes into a Raphael painting. There are all sorts of wild things and, of course, there’s a work like “Guernica,” that’s very much in protest against the war, and it was designed to shock and alert people. The list does go on and on.

Q: Yes, there’s a long tradition of artists in protest. Any thoughts on why you were singled out?

A: That’s an interesting question, I didn’t think of it as “Why me?” You have to realize that there was one article written, by a very visible and respected voice. Is she still as respected? I don’t know, but she was respected. I think this was a person who had decided that there was nothing happening that was of any interest anymore, and then, lo and behold, there’s a whole generation of people making work about issues like sexual politics, death, Aids, breast cancer. People are making works about being black, about being Asian, about being whatever--things that were totally outside of her system of critical belief.

She declared that it was invalid, and used a very visible example. I had just been on the cover of Time magazine, and, in an even worst transgression, I had been in her magazine with a major profile. Obviously, they didn’t get her permission for that. I was a moving target, so she fired at me and in fact, if you read the article, she’s firing at a whole generation and a way of thinking. Ultimately, I could see she was trying to grapple with a change in the air that she could not understand.

Q: Do you see that perhaps she created a positive discourse?

A: Something positive came out of it. I don’t give her that credit; I don’t think she knew what she was doing. What I’ve been saying lately is I can learn from what happened. When people go to see work now, they look with a sharper eye. Good. But people also realize that it’s not enough to say, “I won’t look because it doesn’t make me feel good,” or “I don’t like it.” People have to realize art is a serious thing.

Q: I want to know more about your personal journey into this “serious thing.” You grew up in a predominately white town in rural New York. How did being the only black kid on the block shape you?

A: I was full of the problems like self worth, self doubt, lack of self esteem, the whole question of what is beautiful. My hair is kinky, its not beautiful, I can’t hide my hair. But the positive side of that is that when you’re young enough, you are flexible in your mind, and you also understand people before you understand they are white people. You know that they are Johnny or Susan. The difference in their smell is not so upsetting, it’s just different and curious. I think that has helped me to be able to bond, and travel as I do in the world today.

Q: How did that lead you into art, and dance?

A: I’m not absolutely proud of the way it happened, and I’ve analyzed this a lot. I remember that I got attention when I showed off. No one noticed my clothes, or no one noticed what I didn’t know, or maybe they didn’t notice that I was black when I entertained them. I was a class clown. I would get up and imitate James Brown for them--but at that time no one knew what the hell I was doing. I could get away with that, I would entertain them, and that was a way I didn’t have to feel the difference. Now, that is kind of a sad commentary, because it, in a way, means that performers are using their performance as a mask, or a defense against the world. Yes, that was true--but I think it was only partially true.

Q: You’ve also admitted that you feel estranged from modern popular black culture because of your upbringing. Is that struggle with race akin to your struggle over your sexuality?

A: Your question is a complicated one, and not without its twangs of regret and confusion, even now. Yes, when my father decided he wanted to be a black Yankee, and moved us away from the Southern milieu, he did not move us to an urban center where there would be a black community, but smack dab into a German-Italian community, and expected us to grow--which we did. There were some problems there. A lot of it had to do with identity--which we touched upon. When I got to the university level, and I did begin to blend with young blacks, I had enough confidence to want to bring my value system with me. And I insisted that it be accepted. When it wasn’t accepted, I took my marbles and went home.

I wish I’d had a bit more courage and openness to find a way to graft those worlds together, but I was so busy juggling my sexuality, juggling my questions about art and my position in the world, that it was expendable. Quite frankly, I think it was a racist idea on my part, that these people are less important, they don’t have the true faith, I do. And arrogantly I moved away, but always looking back with some concern, and some doubt, even as I kept a stiff upper lip about it. The women that I loved were, for the most part, black women; and there was always that tug, to procreate, to follow in the path of your mother and father, and the path that I knew was with black people. But even that urge was pushed to the side, because this new faith, in some ways an expression of my sexuality, demanded absolute obedience.

But in the last 10 years I have tried to understand what it means to be a Jones. What does it mean to be black? It is an experience which is as varied as we are as a race of people. That’s been a hard-won, but very valuable lesson I have now.

Q: So what’s next for you? What are you working on now?

A: I’m sitting here surrounded by adaptations and translations of Euripides’ “Bacchi,” and I would like to make a popular--and I mean singing and dancing show--using a Greek classic. Of course I’ve settled on the “Bacchi,” which is one of the most problematic Greek tragedies ever written. The ending is certainly not the type that has you leaving the theater humming a happy tune. But I’m wondering how I can achieve something like the ancient Greeks achieved. These plays were performed for everybody--from shoemakers to princes. They were egalitarian performances, part of a religious observance. As you know, I believe very much in the spiritual nature of art and life. But how can I make something that talks about incredible issues of public morality, death, life and do it in the form of a musical, a show that has people who can sing the tunes. So that seems like a challenge, and it’s what I’m doing now.