In Still/Here, Bill T. Jones contemplated mortality, something he faced at a young age. What do you contemplate? What weighs heavily on you and your generation? Choose something that you think about deeply and consistently. Discuss how you would you go about using dance to investigate this issue. Why would you do it this way?
What you choose can be personal (think about how Bill T. Jones lost Arnie Zane to AIDS; how he himself is HIV positive and thought about his own mortality at a young age; how the veterans in “Action Conversations” reflected on their experiences in combat, etc.). It could also be something that is a communal, social or political experience (consider Victoria Marks’ “Not About Iraq,”; AIDS activism in Bill T. Jones’ “D-Man in the Waters,”; Marylee Hardenbergh’s response to Hurricane Katrina in “One River Mississippi,” and the ballroom dance classes in “Dancing in Jaffa.”).
