Dancing in a House Divided
Sometimes our sense of a situation lags well behind our awareness of the meaning of that situation. Slightly jet-lagged and certainly disoriented by a two hours drive thru a sun-blasted landscape - checkpoints and roadwork, fields spotted with workers, scattershot clusters of houses and errant donkeys - several dancers, my company's Associate Artistic Director and I finally arrived in the Palestinian town of Jenin.
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With the mellow calm of a natural-born facilitator, our driver, Rahid, enlisted from the teeming streets the help of two young Palestinians to help us find the Freedom Theater in what is one of the West Bank's oldest refugee camps. Though well prepared by Ilana and Rebecca of the Encounter Program, we were still not sure how we would be received as we entered the public meeting room where we were to meet the Freedom Theater's Director, activist Juliano Mer Khamis, and some of his students. To say the scene was peculiar would describe it weakly. Walking past a poster of Che Guevara, we turned into a long, low-ceilinged room overstuffed with couches, chairs, tables and a shelf of books and manuals all in Arabic, where a group of about 10 or 15 people sat or stood. The men, aged 18 to 25 with a few as old as 50, were accompanied by women of the same ages. Some were dressed in jeans and t-shirts, others in the more traditional loose garments with scarves draped elegantly around heads and shoulders revealing only their faces and intense eyes. They acknowledged us cordially, but their true attention was riveted on a wide screen TV, the color correction of which was so far off as to be psychedelic. They were watching the breaking news on Al Jazeera of the Israeli commando storming the Marmara, one of the boats in the (?) latest humanitarian flotillas challenging the Israeli's blockade of Gaza. Writhing bloody bodies, tense heavily armed soldiers, helicopters and people screaming out of what might have been physical pain or anger or perhaps both. All was awash in outlandish colors accompanied by a coolly professional woman's commentary describing what was clearly a major news event.
Juliano Mer Khamis, the Director, appeared. He is, as a man in his late 40's, the son of an Israeli Jewish mother who had been an avid member of the Israel Brigade in 1948 and a Palestinian father. Juliano had abandoned a successful acting career in Israel some years back to devote himself to the continued development of this program founded by his mother, Anna, dedicated to the education of the children of the Jenin Refugee Camp. He commenced to add his own commentary, speaking of the "debacle," the tactic of the military and of his two friends whom he feared for, both organizers of the flotilla.
A video camera had been following us since we stepped from our van. The cameraman affably informed me that it was to capture the moment for the use of the Freedom Theater. More cameras began to appear, one - very professional - on the shoulder of a traditionally garbed Palestinian woman who gave me a firm handshake and introduced herself as Linda.
Graciousness and cordiality were never lacking and we were offered coffee, which I refused for time's sake knowing how long and unpredictable our journey had been and that we had agreed to leave in about three hours so as to get back to Tel Aviv before dark.
This excursion had been discussed for some months back in NY. My dance company's Board Chair Emeritus, Ellie Friedman, and her husband, Jonathan Cohen, a founder of the New Israel Fund, were with us. They had been adamant that if we were to perform in Israel, we had to do an event in the territories. Their reasoning being that just as all Israelis are prevented by law to go into these territories, it would be impossible for any West Bank Palestinian to come and see our performances in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa. In the somewhat detached haze of concerns of returning to Israel after a 15-year hiatus, I had done a sort of ethical math and decided that a workshop in an underserved community might balance out the equation. However, the palpable urgency of the TV scene, the expectant courtesy we were being shown, the warm sincerity of the two young Jewish women representing the Encounter Program, were a bit of a "Zen Slap."
We pulled everyone away from the TV to get on with what we had come to do: lead a group of young aspiring actors comprised of 5 young men and two young women as well as a translator and two volunteer teachers - one a young woman from Germany, the second a student from NYU - in movement exercises stressing body/mind awareness, weight sharing, and the interaction of the individual with the ensemble. My moment of epiphany did not come until I "forgot" where and who we all were as we breathed, shook, balanced, lead and followed with an enthusiasm and glee that verged on giddiness. A general good cheer and sense of possibility arose contrasting the breaking news on the pigment shocked TV screen.
But we had to leave time for a meal, coffee and conversation so the workshop ended. As we were preparing to leave the space, one of the young men, almost defiantly insisted on doing the exercise one more time while another approached me and, with a gentle comment that verged on criticism asked: "How can you come for such a short time and leave us, hungry for such work?"
We had to go.
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When we arrived back at our hotel in Tel Aviv I received a somewhat anxious and very caring call from Michal, our tour manager from Bimot Productions, a very warm, no-nonsense and highly professional Israeli woman, who said that everyone was very concerned to know how things had gone for us on this "very special day." "Did they harangue you with terrible things about Israel?" she asked with pointed casualness. What could I say other than it had been a "very big experience."
We certainly witnessed much discontent in our visit and - to the uninitiated like myself - the situation in the camp seemed untenable. What stays with me however is the intense commitment and openness of Juliano and his young artists who - like Ilana and Rebecca of the Encounter Program - are performing an arduous, task-based choreographic exercise: finding maximum freedom of movement in the daunting confines of time, place and circumstance.
–– Bill T. Jones, Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Springtime by the Connecticut River: Glancing Upstream and Down
There's a balmy breeze that accompanies the peaceful meandering of the Connecticut River, bordered on one shore by the stark lightness of beech trees and gentle budding of other trees here at the Montgomery House. I am one of this year's Montgomery Fellows at Dartmouth College, here in Hanover, New Hampshire.
–– Bill T. Jones, Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Happy New Year!
...I quoted what the young Rabbi said at the memorial for Arnie Zane in April of 1988: "The day is long, the work is great, we're not obliged to finish the task, but neither are we allowed to ignore it." This was a condolence to family and friends as we honored a young, talented man whose life had abruptly ended.
–– Bill T. Jones, Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Where am I?...
Two days after Thanksgiving, four days since Fela! premiered on Broadway, seventeen days since Serenade/The Proposition opened at the Joyce Theater in NY, two months and ten days since Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray premiered at Illinois's Ravinia Festival, three months and twenty days since I last wrote a blog...
–– Bill T. Jones, Saturday, November 28, 2009
Questions on Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray
In this video, I address some of the common questions we've been getting from our audiences.
–– Bill T. Jones, Wednesday, November 4, 2009
A Letter to Merce
Please forgive me for making you a landmark in the landscape - a fine, singular, curiously shaped tree perhaps. Yes, you are the landmark many of us use to get our bearings, measure ourselves against, or sometimes, to take refuge under.
–– Bill T. Jones, Tuesday, July 28, 2009
