Transcript: Bodies Move

Bill [vo]: We’re sort of trying to have it both ways now.

Jamyl: ...any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it.

Bill [vo]: Paul is the dancing body that, for those persons who need it, will identify with Lincoln.

Jamyl: -- that would be another question.

Bob [vo]: It is such a non-sequitur, a dance work about Abraham Lincoln. Where the post-modernists came out of was saying ‘no’ to narrative, ‘no’ to overt meaning.

Bob: We are expressing ourselves purely through this movement.

Bob [vo]: There’s a piece that Bill made called ‘D-Man in the Waters’. It’s pure dance, lovely music.

Leah [vo]: When I came in, Bill’s kind of thrust was going back to

Leah: what beauty is and could pure movement on its own be interesting.

Bob [vo]: That’s part of where Bill came from.

Bob [vo]: He has those bones in his body.

Bill [vo]: There is great beauty in impulses and movements. But my generation, we were interested in theatricality, psychology. A body like mine came into the field and was suddenly aware of being a black body being watched by white bodies. Now this avant-garde I’m talking about – color is not important.

Bill: It’s all the mechanics of it, like animals, and I said, no no no no. ‘Cause you’re not only watching a body move, but there’s a whole social political psychological construct that allows you and I to even be in the room together.

Bill [vo]: Now what place does that play in the choreography?