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Alison Stewart: This is All of It live from the WNYC studios in Soho. I'm Alison Stewart. The Get Lit with All of It monthly book club is back in session and we are meeting this coming Wednesday. I will be in conversation with author Dinaw Mengestu about his novel Someone Like Us. Some exciting news. Our musical guest is five-time Grammy Award winning musician Angélique Kidjo. She'll be performing at Carnegie Hall later in the week, but we get her first. That's Wednesday, October 30th at 6:00 PM at the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 40th Street. We understand there are some tickets available. They are free by the way, but head to wnyc.org/getlit to get your reservation. Now, let's get this hour started.

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Alison Stewart: 30 years ago, choreographer Bill T. Jones staged a series of workshops around the country called Survival Workshops: Talking and moving about life and death. He asked people diagnosed with a terminal illness to open up about their experiences and translate those feelings into movement. These were average people, not dancers. Bill then took their words, their voices and crucially, their movements to create a multimedia dance performance piece about death, mortality and resilience. Titled Still/Here, it premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of music back in 1994. Bill Moyers made a documentary about the piece and now 30 years later, it's back on stage at BAM.

The original statement of the show stirred up some controversy thanks to a New Yorker piece from a critic who hadn't even seen the production. At the center of the show was always the people. This weekend their stories will be alive again on stage at BAM. Still/Here will run from Wednesday the 30th through Saturday, November 2nd. Joining us now to give us a preview is choreographer and director Bill T. Jones. It's so nice to see you.

Bill T. Jones: It's great to be here.

Alison Stewart: Also dancer and choreographer Arthur Aviles, who was part of the original company that performed the piece in '94. Nice to meet you.

Arthur Aviles: Nice to meet you.

Alison Stewart: Bill, how did you first get the idea for this performance piece?

Bill T. Jones: It was the time we were trying to, on a personal level and on a societal level, understand what was happening. There was a lot of people dying. I remember, oddly enough, it was a woman who was involved in breast cancer. Her name was Sunny Dupree. She participated in one of my workshops. She said to me, "You should be doing a piece about breast cancer." I said, "Why? I'm a gay man and I'm HIV positive." It's true. She said, "That's why you should be doing it." It made me think differently about the lonely feeling when you have been marked that you are going to die and that the world couldn't understand it. I began to look and see women differently.

I began to see this condition was a very universal condition. Then you get the scent of the poetry of it. That’s when I went in pursuit of looking for people who were experts, people who were on the front line. As your introduction said very aptly, people who had something to share with us. One thing in the workshops, they used to say, that there's something in the world called the arrogance of the well. I said, "What do you mean by that?" They said, there's something, unless you've been received that diagnosis, unless you are in that group, you have a feeling that it doesn't touch you. I was provoked. With the provocation came a desire for some poetic release. That's where the piece came from.

Alison Stewart: Arthur, what did you think about this as a dancer in the company?

Arthur Aviles: First of all, I'm really honored to embody the words of these really wonderful participants of these workshops. They were given to us by Bill, but we also were able to experience them on videotape after Bill created the workshops. It feels as if it's an honor to have been a part of it.

Alison Stewart: Did you understand what was going to be required of you?

Arthur Aviles: As usual, Bill asks us to make sure that we're involving our whole selves. It's all about being able to understand the sentiment of the participants and be able to bring that into our bodies.

Alison Stewart: The slash between Still and Here, what does that represent?

Bill T. Jones: It had to be very clear that we easily say, "I'm still here." In making a work of art, what do you mean by still? Do you mean continuing, ongoing, or do you mean at peace, at rest? Both are at. Therefore, in the work of art, you want to sit down in the ambiguity of the word. That slash says, "Hold up." Then there's Here. What do you mean, Here? Here is where you are physically. Here is where you are emotionally. Here is this country. Here is this time. Still/Here is a portrait of all of our dilemma, I think. If you want to call it dilemma. Maybe our circumstance.

Alison Stewart: The piece was not solely about people who have HIV or aids, but it was during this time. It was a crisis in New York. You lived here. I live here. How did that shape the piece initially?

Bill T. Jones: It made it urgent. I have, in some of my snarkier moments, said about my colleagues, who are brilliant artists, brilliant formal artists, "I wish you a great tragedy." Because the tragedy focuses the mind in a way. As Arthur was suggesting, it focuses the heart. Yes, I think that it's been a learning experience and I'm still learning it even now. What is this piece about and who is it for? As you know, I'm a socially engaged artist, which is, I have a contract with my audience. What is that contract? I'm also an extremely self-involved person. Artists are. We are. Do we do it only for self-involvement or is there some participation in being alive? That's what I call art making.

Alison Stewart: I'm curious if the current COVID pandemic, Arthur, came into your mind when you think about this piece.

Arthur Aviles: Here we are about 30 years later and there are many different kinds of things happening to the world. I think that the younger dancers who are doing it now, might tap into that. At this moment, I am thinking about its history and where it was back then and that we get to honor these voices of the past now.

Bill T. Jones: This is a dangerous moment because I have a feeling that COVID, as horrible and frightening as it was, there's something different. I don't think that anyone ever said that COVID can't be cured. If you get a positive COVID, you are at deaths. You're going to die. That's what HIV was. Women listening to this know what a breast cancer diagnosis means. We have a piece called Slash Poison Burn. I had never heard those terms until women in the workshop said, "These are your choices. Slash, which is--

Alison Stewart: Vasectomy.

Bill T. Jones: Yes, vasectomy. Operation. Poison, chemotherapy, or Burn, radiation. As a man, I was ignorant of that. Is there a corollary with COVID? I'm not sure.

Alison Stewart: I think the early days.

Bill T. Jones: In the beginning.

Alison Stewart: Early days, nobody knew what was happening.

Bill T. Jones: They very quickly found some way of dealing with it. How many years has it taken us to find the treatment for HIV? How are we doing with breast cancer? How are we doing? Why are we doing the Olympics? Why are we doing the comparison? There's a tendency to do that. COVID, I think, did sharpen a lot of people's wit and imagination around this issue of mortality.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with director Bill T. Jones and original company member Arthur Aviles about the restaging of their 1994 dance production, Still/Here. What did you learn about movement, about dance, watching these average people, nonprofessional dancers, express themselves with their bodies.

Bill T. Jones: I can't say that was new. I'm a great student and a lover of the work of Meredith Monk. Meredith Monk had her mother on stage with her in the late '60s, early '70s in a piece. Meredith Monk lived almost like a counterculture, hippie life, wherein everything was democratized. High art was being assaulted every day by asking the question, what is appropriate subject matter? Who is allowed to be on stage? I inherited that. One thing you do learn is that if people are comfortable, if you really embrace them, they can go very far expressing in the personal something that is universal and big.

The movements were sometimes childlike. Give me a portrait of yourself and someone opens their arms and says, "I like to give myself out completely to others." It's a banal expression, but it was very heartfelt in the way it was delivered. That was the job of Ken Frazelle and then Vernon Reed to take that banal sentiment and to heighten it. Our job in working with brilliant dancers like Arthur or Larry Goldhuber or Odile Ren Adelaide, people like that, we were able to find expert movers. These are, as Martha Graham used to say, "Dancers are acrobats of God," but now acrobats of God, handling the most basic human material was a very interesting exercise for me.

It reaffirmed something which we feel very much in this election right now. What's at stake in the common. What's at stake in saying there is an Us or a We? I come from a very alienated world. Do we really believe there is a We? Those people were showing me that, yes, we all are a part of the same tribe.

Alison Stewart: Arthur, how did it feel to confront the realities of death, but to do it through movement?

Arthur Aviles: Really, it was very difficult for us to grapple with what other people were going through. If we tapped into our empathy, we could really bring ourselves there.

Alison Stewart: Do you remember, either of you, is there any person who sticks in your brain that you think about regularly?

Arthur Aviles: There was a woman named Carol. Bill gave us different videotapes of the events and of the workshops. We had to choose some people so that we can parse it out. Mine was Carol. Her name was Carol. I'm not sure exactly what she was going through, but she--

Bill T. Jones: Breast cancer survivor.

Arthur Aviles: Breast cancer survivor, yes. She would rub her hand on her temple and say, "Mortality and knowledge."

Bill T. Jones: She said, "If I could just figure it out. If I could just figure it out. Mortality and knowledge." Yes. For me, it's Tawny. Tawny was a young fundamentalist woman. She must have been a wonderful young gymnast. I didn't know, in that workshop that she did, that she was two weeks from dying. She talked about she wanted to fall in love, she wanted sex. She couldn't because of her illness. Her lungs were filling with fluid. She was questioning God. My mom will beep in her pants if she heard me say this, but I'm wondering if God is the right way to go. Vernon Reed heard Tawny very loud and clear in all of her hopefulness and her sensuality. We have a whole section called Tawny's Blues. I think Tawny is very important to me.

Alison Stewart: You asked people to draw a map of their life and map out the movement around the room and act it out for you. In the Bill Moyers documentary about this, you're asked to do the same. Let's listen to a little bit of you, Bill, talking about your own life story.

Bill T. Jones: As I was saying today, if I were to start the life, what it felt like to be the 10th of 12 kids. That little circle is somehow prescribed by the architecture of the family, mother and father. Then there is this constant fear. There's a tangent that comes away from that circle. Never daring to look directly forward. Nightmares. This was a sissy boy. This was a boy who was scared of his shadow. Something happened around the time that he first encountered white people. Something happened that reminded him of the safeness of that first years. He was now encouraged to speak. He now had something to say.

There was this circle. Then there's a confusion. Confusion as to if he is the son of Estelle and Gus, or if he is somehow the Bill, who is the one who goes to school with white kids every day, but comes home and speaks black English. Comes home to a poverty family. The confusion looks like a circle, which sounds like the one that we had earlier. Then there's a thing called sex, and everything stops there.

Alison Stewart: Do you remember that moment? What do you remember about that moment?

Bill T. Jones: Oh, I remember it very much. Yes. What do you mean, what do I remember about it? I was in it, literally.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you were.

Bill T. Jones: Bill Moyers. It's a testament to trusting Bill Moyers. By my very nature, I'm a very confessional person. I think that that was-- He would, throwing down the gauntlet, said, "You're asking people to do it. Can you do it?" I discovered something about myself. I could have gone on for an hour, an hour and a half doing it, but I was trying to keep in mind what the people in the workshop needed. What I wanted the piece to have and what I wanted Bill Moyers to know was at stake in revealing myself. It's interesting you would choose that clip.

Alison Stewart: You went on for a while.

Bill T. Jones: The fact is, I don't think I'm just another person in the survival workshop. I am--

Arthur Aviles: It was a beautiful example of what the others could do and did do. They did follow the example and they were able to tell their own stories.

Bill T. Jones: Yes. What I was going to say is, I feel like I was the mind behind it. It's odd to be the subject and at the same time to be the object. That's called meta, right? Yes. I didn't know the term at the time, but that's what I was demonstrating. It's crazy making to be trying to be in something authentic and not performing it. As, in relationships, we tend to-- When we should be real, we are performing what we think we're supposed to say. Do you dare be honest, but not perform honesty, but be honest? Thank you, Bill Moyers, for that boondoggle of a problem.

Alison Stewart: There are moments of spoken word, moments of music. Sometimes there's pure silence, Bill. How do you decide when lean or embrace the words? When do you decide silence is the right way to go? "This is what we want. Just silence."

Bill T. Jones: You realize, over me hangs orthodoxy of contemporary dance. Contemporary dance declared itself free from being the Sleeping Beauty. We're not here. You know how it is in an opera? Now we have the Dream Ballet. We've seen this. In the Dream Ballet, you'll see a version of our heroine, so on. We claimed that our art form was a primary art form in and of itself. What you're asking is very true to the abstraction that was a high ideal. Persons like myself were still hearing language, storytelling, being an African American person, and these-- How can you, in the avant-garde, bring in it the truth and feeling of the Black church?

Because in the Black church, you need somebody to say, "Amen, I hear you." The avant-garde was not in the habit of saying, "Amen, I hear you." It was all, "I'm thinking about what you are saying." How do you get people to actually put their heart on the line? That has been my journey in the Art world. This whole piece is an example of that. The controversy that you were talking about is, when something is really personal, really scary personal. It's messy, it's not cleaned up.

Arthur Aviles: That's when it breaks through that fourth wall and it reaches the audience's hearts.

Bill T. Jones. We hope. I quote-- My people who know me, who are listening to this, Marcel Duchamp said that art was primarily an intellectual activity. Interesting. Art is primarily an intellectual activity, which means it comes in through the eyes, is processed, and has meaning in the brain. I say it comes into the eyes, it goes through the brain, and if it's really fierce, if it's really good, it goes to the heart. I wonder what he thinks about that. He's no longer with us, but what would he think about that? What does he think about singing and shouting in public?

What does he think about crying in public, breaking down and all those things? Is it always got to have this Apollonian distance from itself? This is a question I'm still asking about the Art world and who I have been in it.

Alison Stewart: There are a lot of moves, Arthur, where the dancers are touching one another. Everyone's touching one another. What do you think of the collective moving in practice in this piece?

Arthur Aviles: That was really important. It began with this nature. Bill has an exercise that's practiced in the field called A Flock of Birds. Those birds are connected to each other spiritually and literally, the way they create those patterns. This felt like nature to me, to feel the group and feel the group come in.

Bill T. Jones: Lest she be listening, my great collaborator and teacher, Lois Welk, who was the moving force behind the dance collective I was a member of, the American Dance Asylum. She had an exercise called Paralleling, which, as Arthur says, came from how do birds fly together in such precision? Because they have a-- They track each other spatially. I think the laying on of hands is our crude human way of doing it. The birds do it purely by electronic signals or sight. It does feel like nature. What is not like nature is the self-consciousness of, "Now, describe what you're doing." That's what we are. We're thinking animals. Is it Plato or Aristotle who says that? We are thinking animals, and yet we are animals.

Arthur Aviles: When we put our arms on each other's shoulders, it shows how we are supportive of each other. I think that that's part of what Bill was getting at, we're not alone in this and that we can be with each other.

Bill T. Jones: Loneliness. A big bugaboo. Isn't it scary? I ask people in this workshop to answer a couple of questions. What do you love and what do you fear? What you love was all over the map. What you fear oftentimes was loss of control. That loss of control was when it gets to the end of this life, when I am debilitated, will there be anyone there who cares enough to take care of me? That's what I heard behind that. My fear is the future and loss of control.

Alison Stewart: Still/Here is running at BAM from October 30th through November 2. My guests have been Arthur Aviles and Bill T. Jones. Thank you for coming to the studio today.

Bill T. Jones: Thank you for having us.

Arthur Aviles: Thank you so much.