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Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
2010-01-15

Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray

Bill T. Jones likes to ask questions. During the Q and A session following the performance (January 15, 2010 in Chapel Hill, NC) of Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray, Jones turned each question back to the audience: "Well, how are you making sense of it?" "What are you feeling?" Indeed, appropriate questions to ask, after this complex dance-theater work that asks a set of weighty questions of its own. What is the nature of legacy? Of memory? How do our (hi)stories intersect? What is our responsibility to each other, to our country or our world?

Jones uses the life of Abraham Lincoln to frame these questions, presenting several moments in Lincoln's life through dance, song, and text. This work is not a narrative biography, however; he juxtaposes these episodes with present stories, bringing Lincoln's presence forward in time. Time, for Jones, is not linear. We see time represented in the circle of stage, bounded by curtains that open and close to bring us a clear or hazy view of times past, present, and future. We see time in the recurring movement and musical themes, the shadows cast, the echoes of earlier words and gestures. We feel the rhythm of time, measured not in minutes or years but by musical beats and the rhythm of speech.

As the lights go to black, faint sounds, far-away bits of melodies, fragments of voices murmur through the auditorium. Down the dark aisle comes Clarissa Sinceno, singing, guiding us with her lantern into the world of the dance. A misty white curtain encircles the stage, glowing behind the tall silhouette that strides across its curving surface, a stovepipe hat clutched behind his back. A long, African-American woman stands alone on a smaller, circular platform that presses slightly into the audience. As she dances, a list of body parts is read aloud, moving from the top of the head down to the bones of the feet, and every joint and hollow along the way. Does this list assemble or dissemble her? Her movement is lyrical, mostly soft, but disjointed. Her arms, like an extended embrace, reach away from the twist and lean of her body. We will hear this accounting of body parts again - during a slave auction, as a man dances trapped in a circle of columns - and again - during the section called "The War," a litany of broken bodies and fighting limbs.

In Fondly the physical manifestation of Lincoln is distilled down to a children's textbook biography, his marriage to Mary Todd, a few gestures, and the rhythm and weight of his speech. Jones gives us not just Lincoln's brief biography, but his own, and those of his dancers or their relatives. What is being left out of each paragraph of a life? What is included? What distinguishes Lincoln's (hi)story from our own? Although Lincoln has a physical presence in this work, I believe it is the idea of Lincoln as a "Great Man," as someone willing to work for the betterment of all people, that brings this dance together, that makes it relevant now and in the future. Jones draws the issues of Lincoln's time - namely the Civil War and the abolition of slavery - into dialogue with more recent debates about civil rights. During the section called "Debates/The Boil that Bursts," the danced arguments include rhetoric from issues such as mixed-race marriage and gay rights.

The production, for the most part, was masterfully directed, with only a few false notes. The projected images were, at times, too obvious or overdone; after the "house divided" debates, a picture of a capital building projected on the back wall melts down. During the "War" section, Lincoln (danced by Paul Matteson) wears bright red gloves, seeming to signify "blood on his hands" a bit too literally. However, the performers were very strong, and brought their distinctive movement styles to the work. The live music also added a rich texture, in the blend of traditional folk music, American spirituals, and contemporary compositions. The set, costumes, and lighting were also integrated into a cohesive, graceful whole.

Fondly do We Hope ends in the future. Like parts of the past, it is a hazy future - one that we have not fully imagined yet. The narrator assures us that the people of this future time, like us, like those of Lincoln's time, are still believing in great men and women, but the question is raised - how will we, in this time, carry on Lincoln's legacy? This question is what I think Jones hopes we will take from this work; not facts but feelings - the memory of effort, of movement, the lingering melancholy of a life unfinished, and the tantalizing hope of the future.

Anne Morris

© Copyright World Dance Reviews 2010

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