Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past

Bill T. Jones created three tributes to Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth, including Serenade/The Proposition, 100 Migrations, and Fondly Do We Hope. These works explored key moments in Lincoln's life and his legacy, using video and audio text from Lincolns writings. Democracy Moving explores how these works provided an occasion and method for reconsidering democracy and history through movement and positioning dance as a form of both history and historiography. The project also addresses how different communities commemorate historical figures, events, and places through art, particularly Black US American counter-memorial practices that address histories of slavery. The book features materials from Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Companys archive, interviews with artists, and photos that document this critical stage of Jones's career, exploring how aesthetics can imagine more just and equitable social formations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 290 pages
Publication date: 20 January 2022
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

On the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, renowned choreographer and director Bill T. Jones created three tributes: Serenade/The Proposition, 100 Migrations, and Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray. These widely acclaimed dance works incorporated video and audio text from Lincoln's writings as they examined key moments in his life and his enduring legacy. Democracy Moving explores how these works provided both an occasion and a method by which democracy and history might be reconceived through movement, positioning dance as a form of both history and historiography. The project addresses how different communities choose to commemorate historical figures, events, and places through art, whether performance,oratory, song, statuary, or portraiture, and in particular, Black US American counter-memorial practices that address histories of slavery. Advancing the theory of oscillation as Black aesthetic praxis, author Ariel Nereson celebrates Bill T. Jones as a public intellectual whose practice has contributed to the project of understanding America's relationship to its troubled past. The book features materials from Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Companys largely unexplored archive, interviews with artists, and photos that document this critical stage of Jones's career as it explores how aesthetics, as ideas in action, can imagine more just and equitable social formations.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472075126