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Choreographer Bill T. Jones’s era-defining dance Still/Here is perhaps the most written-about piece of performance movement created in the last thirty years. Originating at BAM's Next Wave Festival in 1994, where it staged an anniversary revival in 2024, Still/Here 's boundary-breaking, personal-as-political ethos remains resonant and pertinent in the modern environment. First staged before the apex of the AIDS epidemic, Still/Here asks what we owe the dying and what they have to teach us. Jones, himself H.I.V. positive, ideated the project only a few years after his creative and life partner, Arnie Zane, had died of AIDS. At the heart of Still/Here are the “Survival Workshops: Talking and Moving about Life and Death,” conducted across the country with people living with life-threatening illness. The highly formal structures of Still/Here are delivered with simplicity and sophistication, marked by spoken text, video portraits, dance and the abstract nature of gesture.Gretchen Bender’s visual concept and multimedia environment is joined by music from Kenneth Frazelle (sung by Odetta) and instrumentalist Vernon Reid. Long-time collaborative contributors include Liz Prince (costumes) and Robert Wierzel (lighting). Ultimately, it is the work's non-professional participants’ generosity of spirit and willingness to express their experience both with words and gestures that provide the deepest gravitas. Their gestures inform the choreography, their words make up the lyrics, their images frame the stage. They will always be Still/Here.
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The Clarice, University Boulevard and Stadium Dr,College Park, Maryland, United States
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