Still/Here
at the Shubert Theatre, March 28 and 29
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In 1992 Jones, who is HIV positive and whose partner Arnie Zane died of AIDS in 1988, began holding workshops with people who had terminal illnesses, asking them to describe such things as the moment they were told of their illness and the imagined moment of their death. He then used their words–often as lyrics for the songs composed by Kenneth Frazelle and Vernon Reid–and video images of them in the piece. Croce argued that she’d been “excluded” by Jones’s method: “I don’t deny that Still/Here may be of value in some wholly other sphere of action, but it is as theatre, dance theatre, that I would approach it. And my approach has been cut off. By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism.”
In general the contrasts between the experience of the “victims” and the performers’ movement are disconcerting. After the dancers do several cartwheels–which must be as easy for them as rolling out of bed–we see a slow-motion videotape of a heavyset woman in glasses cartwheeling that emphasizes her effort and her triumph in ending the movement standing: the image underlines crucial issues in any meditation on mortality, physical limitations and the impulse to overcome them. But professional dancers doing effortless cartwheels don’t look vulnerable–there’s no triumph there. Perhaps the juxtaposition that bothered me most, however, was the one between several surreally “enhanced” video images of hearts pumping and dancers in profile contracting and releasing their torsos to the rhythms of the pulsing heart. Beating hearts always make me think of the heart stopping, of the fragility of life. But watching the dancers I could only think of what splendid physical specimens they were, a fact brought home to me by their extraordinarily strong and supple backs. I didn’t believe they’d ever die.
It’s a failure I was happy to be able to see, however. And for that I can thank Performing Arts Chicago, which earlier in the week brought in La Compagnie Marie Chouinard, a Canadian troupe very different from Jones’s, with no pretense of creating grass-roots art. Instead Chouinard’s work is firmly anchored in the tradition of art for art’s sake, complete with allusions to dance history. This, plus rather old-fashioned designs harking back to Martha Graham and Nijinsky, makes the enterprise seem a little archaic. But at least Chouinard accomplishes the goals she’s set herself.
