BAM Artists and the Culture Wars of the 80s and 90s

Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), Photo: Maria Baranova

By Susan Yung

Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), coming to the Howard Gilman Opera House June 6—8, is a paean to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work was key in the culture wars of the 1980—90s. The Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, and its Director Dennis Barrie, were acquitted of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibition of Mapplethorpe photographs. Bryce Dessner, who composed the score for Triptych, grew up in Cincinnati and recalls, “I was told by the authorities that I was not allowed to look at Mapplethorpe’s photographs—that these tremendous works of art were not art at all, but pornography … Barrie was jailed and art was put on trial in municipal court. It was a huge moment for me.”

Bill T. Jones—A BAM Featured Archival Collection

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performs Jones' A Letter to My Nephew at the BAM Harvey from Oct 3 to 7.

It's a good occasion to introduce you to the Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive, a vast trove of artifacts and ephemera from BAM's 156-year history as a performance and community center.

The featured collection on Bill T. Jones includes links to richly detailed entries on all of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's BAM productions, plus a selection of materials from performances.

Clicking on a show title takes you to a page with a description of the show, collaborators (with links to their other productions at BAM), and ephemera documenting that show including photos, audio, programs, and more.

We are excited to be able to share this incredibly rich archive, and encourage you to poke around and discover the history of BAM and the artists and art that have made it a popular destination since 1861.

—Susan Yung

From the Archives: Groundbreaking Black Artistry at BAM

In honor of Black History Month, we turned to the BAM Hamm Archives to learn more about some of the numerous legendary black artists who’ve graced our stages over the years. Many of these artists deeply integrated activism and their support for civil rights and equality into their art.

Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson was a pioneering artist best known for singing the iconic “Ol’ Man River” in stage and film productions of Show Boat. In 1931, he also performed a one-night song recital at BAM's very own Howard Gilman Opera House. In 2015, BAM presented the story of the civil rights activist and performer in the theatrical production The Tallest Tree in the Forest.

 

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In Context: A Rite

Photo: A Rite, by 

A Rite runs at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from October 3—5. Context is everything, so get even closer to the incendiary action with this curated selection of articles, videos, and original blog pieces related to the show. For those of you who've already seen it, help us keep the conversation going by telling us what you thought below.

The Rite, Remixed

by Brian McCormick

“I’m a post-modern constructionist. The Nijinsky version would be problematic to modern people.” — Bill T. Jones

When Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring, he set out to shock. Written for the 1913 Paris season of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the score featured provocative approaches to rhythm and tonality, with transitions that lurched wildly and aggressively between movements. The primitivism of Nijinsky’s choreography and Roerich’s scenic elements evinced the ballet’s subtitle, Pictures of Pagan Russia. The music, likewise, was heavily influenced by Russian folk songs, although Stravinsky denied it. While there may have been chaos in the audience on opening night 100 years ago, The Rite of Spring has  become one of the best-known and most recorded works in the classical repertoire.

Still, to many dance-makers, the idea of doing another Rite of Spring is practically taboo. “I’m a postmodern constructionist,” choreographer Bill T. Jones said. “The Nijinsky version would be problematic to modern people.”

“We come from the dance world,” added Janet Wong, associate artistic director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. “We don’t want to make this.”

This very reluctance opened the way for the creation of A Rite, a collaboration between Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and SITI Company, under the artistic direction of Anne Bogart. They came together at the University of North Carolina through a festival organized by distinguished musicologist Severine Neff.

BAM Blog Questionnaire: Will Bond & Jenna Riegel, A Rite dactors

by Rhea Daniels

Jenna Riegel and Will Bond in A Rite, photo by Paul B. Goode

Will Bond is an actor and a founding member of SITI Company and Jenna Riegel is a dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. They are both featured performers in A Rite, an incisive deconstruction of the riot inducing Rite of Spring. The piece is a collaboration between the BTJ/AZDC & SITI Company conceived, directed, and choreographed by Anne Bogart, Bill T. Jones, and Janet Wong in collaboration with the performers. As a product of this collaboration both Will and Jenna may now be referred to as dactors—a term coined by the companies to refer to the all-encompassing skills of the performers.

Did you have any preconceived notions about The Rite of Spring before you entered the studio? Had you seen/heard it performed before?
Jenna: At the time we started working on this I hadn’t ever seen a version. When we started working on it, I watched a few: the Joffrey Ballet version, Pina Bausch. In our workshop that we did at the beginning of the process we watched several excerpts of different versions. I was excited from the beginning that it would be a deconstruction, and about the question of whether it was necessary to even use all parts of the score or if we could use other sound.

Will: I'd seen The Rite of Spring as dance, and I've listened to it many times. SITI actually referenced it once in our production of Who Do You Think You Are, which is a lot about the brain, theory of mind, and neuroplasticity. I had some idea of what our A Rite might be like, but it hasn't turned out anything like that idea.