Chapel/Chapter
Sat, February 9th, 2008
12:00 am
- This event has passed.
“Chapel/Chapter is a riveting experience” – New York Times
A multi-disciplinary collaboration that incorporates movement, film, original music, and spoken text, Bill T. Jones conceived Chapel/Chapter as part of his quest to redefine the idea of the sacred space. Exploring penetrating questions has always been a signature element of Jones’ choreography. Chapel/Chapter asks the audience: How do we create a sacred space when there is evil in the world? What is the relationship between the sacred and the profane, between good and evil, and do they need each other to survive? The Harlem based Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was founded after eleven years of collaboration during which Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988) redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form, and social commentary that would change the face of American dance.
Chapel/Chapter’s spirit is conveyed through live music performed by an ensemble of contemporary musicians: voicestrumentalist Lipbone Redding, a singer/multi-instrumentalist who has been variously described as a vocal trickster and experimental cowboy; cellist Christopher Lancaster, who creates multi-layered, textural music through the use of real-time samplers and effect processing; and soprano Alicia Hall Moran, a classical singer whose influences range from opera to jazz and art song.
The choreographer hopes the piece is able to create a self-enclosed world and a language made up of song, music and words (court transcripts, newspaper articles and jailhouse interviews) in dialog with a rigorous, joyful movement vocabulary. Chapel/Chapter proceeds from the assumption that we always live in the court of public opinion, transgression and judgment. The piece strives to invite that reading of the “real world” to come into the intimacy of a freely imagined contemplative space.
“Rarely has [Mr. Jones] been better able to sublimate his wide-ranging political, social and moral concerns into art. Rarely has the strength of that art made his vision express itself more purely.” John Rockwell, New York Times.
These performances are made possible in part by the Lipp Family Fund for Performing Artists and by the W. Ford Schumann ‘50 Endowment for the Arts.