“Notions of mortality never change,” Bill T. Jones recently told Observer. “We’re born, we grow and some of us will reproduce, and we will most certainly die. That is the human condition.” We were speaking about the themes embedded in Still/Here, his multimedia work that shook the dance theater world in 1994. Now, 30 years later, it will take the stage again where it first premiered, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of its Next Wave 2024 & Emerging Visions festival.
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That the work is as relevant as ever comes down to its universality. “The grappling with mortality, it’s interesting,” Amy Cassello, BAM’s artistic director, said. “I think that’s why the piece is important to present. It’s something we all know and can’t escape, but it’s not intellectual. It’s emotional.” When asked why she chose to include a revival of a piece that caused quite the controversy among critics at its debut in Next Wave, a festival that usually centers experimental and forward-thinking voices, Cassello countered that Still/Here is timeless “because of the way it was constructed, in its vision and craft, and because it’s about the inevitability of death, which necessitates the celebration of life. That doesn’t go away. Thirty years ago, there was a specific challenge presented by AIDS. On the surface, we are emerging from a different pandemic, but in my mind, everything and nothing has changed.”
When Jones, co-founder and artistic director of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, first........