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You describe the narrative arc of my anomalous memoir Last Night on Earth as dream time. My aesthetic has always been non-linear, fueled by free associations, stories, meditations, gestures. I take great pride in being part of a generation of choreographers who conceived of dance as a sequence of non-linear events, ideas with multiple, omnidirectional layers. My mind works that way naturally.
You bring up my reluctant mentor John Cage, and another book, Story/Time: The Life of an Idea, based in part on earlier performances at Montclair State University and Princeton University. I think a lot about Cage’s notion of indeterminacy. Story/Time was my choreographic response. You rightly recall Cage’s conversation during the mid-sixties with fellow composer Morton Feldman about how life’s unexpected encounters can either distract or enhance one’s creative process. White men talk that way! I’m a different person now from the person in Last Night on Earth. Now I really do see the art world as being primarily a white art world. My hero John Cage made it sound so inevitable: the choice between leaving the inspirational door open or closed. But it’s not that simple. Some doors are closed and remain closed unless you do something radical to blast them open. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns had a privileged notion of what art could be. As a creative Black man, I don’t share their sense of entitlement.
You say that I’ve always been honest, that I’ve always asked tough questions, and that I’m still here. A friend—an intellectual raised as a southern Catholic who now teaches around the world—was over for dinner. I asked her, “Are you a person of faith?” She responded, “Well, I am faithful, but my deity is love.” I replied, “My deity is freedom!”
Where are the boundaries and what can I do to negotiate them or to smash through them? I thought breaking down boundaries was something Modernism aspired to. Or was Modernism just deconstructing someone else’s world? The world of my imagination is colored by real life interactions. The people who participated in the survivor workshops for Still Here (1994) were told, “There’s a man who needs his hand held. He’s wondering about his own situation, his own mortality. Come. Come. Would you share your experiences with him?”
One’s art changes as one ages. It's been a long time since I’ve been able to devour space as a dancer. The body abandons us. Now, maybe that’s too dramatic! The body changes around the ego, which still wants to run and jump, even after the body can’t. Where does that impulse go? Into technique? Teaching? Expanding the imagination? On the inside, I’m still the same person I was at twenty-five.
Empathy and pathos. Are these enhanced by age? I think I’m more sentimental, more emotional, more tender in some ways. But I’m also a crusty son-of-a-bitch around other things, particularly when it comes to issues of race and inequity.
As one gets older, one should become more expansive, more brave, able to face tougher questions. Sometimes I am but sometimes I think I’m not made for it. The kind of bravery it takes to throw yourself against the wall of the world’s inequities takes a young, resilient person. You have to feel beautiful, like you’re the shit, sensual, unstoppable. What happens when that confidence falls away? Am I feeling the press of time, my own internal imperatives that make it more difficult for me to negotiate life’s daily challenges? That’s what I’m discovering now. An aging choreographer/director thinks differently about a lot of things.
Like any aging person, I’m concerned about time, how much is left, how to deal with what’s left. I sometimes say to my husband, Bjorn Amelan, “Oh, if I were a normal person, I’d be retired by now.” And he says, “What would you do? You’re a creator.” COVID was a rehearsal for what retirement might be like. Time is this kind of rocky expanse stretching out in front of me. It’s a powerful thing to feel creative. Having projects keeps you in the game. Still, there may come a time when I don’t want to do it anymore.
If life is one simple gesture, I’m just beginning to see the contours of what that is, because I’ve lived long enough. I have little to say about dying, but if I’m allowed to imagine that moment, it would be like an exhale in meditation, shepherding me to another consciousness or into darkness. It’s the shape of a life that I’ve been fortunate enough to create through my own resolve. When death arrives, I hope for grace.
The conversation, recorded via Zoom on March 13, 2023, was transcribed and mutually edited.
Douglas Dreishpoon is director of the Helen Frankenthaler catalogue raisonné project, chief curator emeritus at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York, and consulting editor at the Brooklyn Rail. Current books include Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words (University of California Press) and Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009 (Radius Books), both 2022.
William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones, an American choreographer, director, author, and dancer, is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.