A Community of People Now

Resource for Grades 9-12

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Video

Running Time: 5m 12s
Size: 53.8 MB

Learn more about the documentary American Masters: Bill T. Jones: A Good Man.

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In this segment from the documentary American Masters: Bill T. Jones: A Good Man, the creative process continues for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in the creation of a dance-theater piece about Abraham Lincoln. Bill T. Jones notes the current trend of artists creating work independent of the restrictions of previous generations. In an effort to advance the performance while mirroring the trend, Jones decides to take away some of the focus from the Lincoln family story to include the personal stories of dancers within the company.

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Discussion Questions

Summarize the short presentation Bill T. Jones gives at the New York Historical Society. What point do you think he was trying to make? Do you think there are assumptions associated with Jones creating a piece about Lincoln because he is a Black man? What does Jones mean by “correct” when referring to why he was asked to create the dance piece?
In the video, Jones says he is “making this piece with some imaginary audience in mind.” Paraphrase Jones describing how he sees this imaginary audience.
According to Bill T. Jones, how does the approach of today’s artists differ from those of the 1950s and 1960s? What does Jones say about the impact of technology on today’s audiences and, by extension, on how he approaches his work?
In rehearsal, Jones tells the ensemble “We need to take some of the focus off of the Lincoln family story and put it more on you as a community of people now.” Why do you think he says that? What is he trying to achieve? What is the purpose of incorporating the dancers’ biographies into the piece?
While La Michael Leonard is performing on stage, can you tell if the narration is referring to Abraham Lincoln, to Barack Obama, or to the dancer himself? How does the piece blur the line between Lincoln, Obama, and the dancers themselves? What does this say about Bill T. Jones’ efforts to engage the audience in his dance piece?

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Teaching Tips

Classroom Activity: Six Word Memoirs

Following the example of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, students work in groups to create a biographical questionnaire containing 5-10 questions that will help them learn more about each other. In pairs or small groups, students interview each other using the set of questions they have devised. Once they’ve compiled the answers, students use the completed questionnaires to create Six-Word Memoirs to describe each other’s lives. Some examples:

One brother, two sisters, family love.
His life is consumed by sports.
Aspiring photographer. Camera always in hand.
First generation American, paving the way.
She wants to be an actor.

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Transcript

Bill ‘Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.’ Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, 1842. Now, Victoria and I, when we were just chatting over there a moment ago; I said Lincoln and she heard abolition. And I said, ‘that’s probably because I’m a black man’. We assume that I am going to have a particular approach to the subject.

Bill: Do we? If I do a little racial scanning of this room right now…….hello. What is that? What is that? I told Welz Kaufman, who’s commissioning this work, that I was going to lead with my heart. Why did Welz come to me? I think that they wanted a piece that would be suitable in the age of Obama. And they thought that if you get a black choreographer, you could play all the angles, be correct, and maybe even get something that’s good as art. But correct first.

Bill [vo] I’m making this piece with some imaginary audience in mind. How interested are they in what we call challenge? You tell people it’s going to be challenging, a lot of them are going to run in the other direction, because people are fatigued. The world is so daunting...

Bill: ...that they go to entertainment to be entertained. And you know when you think about the experimentation of the 50s and 60s – The things that people would sit and subject themselves to!

Bill [vo] What was modernism’s premise about what art was supposed to be? The modernist project I believe was predicated on the notion that the artist was a lone genius explorer...

Bill [vo] ...who developed a personal difficult language that the public had to decry at first, and then through repetition and the advocacy of critics, they would finally come around to it, and they would be made better for it. It sounds just a ponderous as I’m saying it, but I think people have decided now, you know what, I don’t have to do that.

Bill [vo] I can have a world online, do my own albums, I don’t have to take the albums artists give me anymore. So maybe I am

Bill: overcompensating, giving them ways in.

Bill: We have to take some of the focus off of the Lincoln family story, and put it more on you as a community of people now. In other words, he was born. He went to school. He thought this. She was born. She went to school.

Dance Narrator [vo] He was born on August 13, 1981 in Tallahassee, Florida. He lived with his moms, in a single parent household.

Bill: Were you middle class?

LaMichael: We were poor.

Bill: mm hmmm. Okay. All right. So…

LaMichael: But I didn’t know we were poor.

Bill: Good.

Dance Narrator [vo] They were poor, but he didn't know they were poor.

Leah [vo] Bill’s taking these bios of us which allows us to connect to the work in a really important way and believe that we’re part of the work. It’s huge to us.

Janet [vo] All of their biographies come from the same questionnaire…

Janet [vo] So he wants to believe liberty is for all…

Bill [vo] But he can’t shake the reality that, uh, some people will... what was the line?

Jamyl [vo]: But some people will always suffer at the hands of other people. After all, life wouldn’t be complete without a blend of good and evil.

LaMichael: I studied Bill T. Jones in high school. I got his biography from my local library, and still have not returned it.

Jamyl: He feels the new president represents a new way of dealing with things. Just as that president did. He hates wars. But he thinks that war was fought for a good reason.