A top US choreographer stepped up with questions about his country's war on terrorism in his Singapore show earlier this month
Last Sunday, Bill T Jones won his first Tony Award for Best Choreography in his debut work for Broadway, "Spring Awakening: The Musical".
Even without the Tony, US theatre's most prestigious recognition, Jones is already one of the most celebrated choreographers in America.
In 1994, he received a MacArthur "Genius" Award. As a trailblazer who redefined dance theatre he was awarded the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
In 2005, the American Dance Festival gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award. And the list goes on.
When I congratulated him for having won the Drama Desk Award for "Spring Awakening" last month, Jones compared the two media.
"It's very different [choreographing for a musical]. It's an entertainment industry and ultimately it's about making people happy and telling them a story. I'm only one of the team - I'm not leading the team. I've been embraced and welcomed [by the theatre community] in a way that's very encouraging and a little scary."
Although he is now choreographing for another musical play, he confirms that dance remains his first love.
The weekend before the Tony Awards, his thought-provoking politically engaged dance theatre work "Blind Date" had its Asian premiere at the Esplanade Theatre, as part of Singapore Arts Festival 2007.
"'Blind Date' started at a time when I was distressed with our last election," says Jones.
"I don't know how it played here in Asia. But we are so self-centred in the US that we think everybody's interested in our problem. Maybe you should be, considering we have a very big and dangerous army, and we've done a terrible job maintaining that power.
"In the last election, suddenly the language changed and everyone read like George Orwell. The two candidates are men of my generation. One of them was a bona fide war hero wounded in Vietnam standing for everything that we should be proud of; the other one was a privileged man who actually disappeared for two years during the war. And suddenly you find they're calling the war hero 'a coward' and the other one 'a hero who's going to protect us'.
"Did the media do this? Or was there something that went wrong in the values of America? And then the man that did win said at one point that he was chosen by God. How was he allowed to say that? What has changed?"
"So 'Blind Date' has two forces - what we think we are, in other words, the enlightenment, the values, the separation between church and state, tolerance, progress, all these things that I was taught as a child, and this new way of thinking about religion, a kind of forced morality. These things were in a kind of a collision with each other."
"I'm trying to reflect those changes in the demographic and different points of view in my company. I asked them 'How do you feel about this dialogue?' Some of my young dancers said, 'You know, I don't think about it: I'm an artist.' I said, 'What?' That's a view of art, right? This is what we do: we charm you, we seduce you. You go to the theatre to forget, right? That's fair."
"I said to the dancers 'I would like to make this piece about each of your individual responses to my question. But some of the people who do not come from the US felt like they were invited to a dinner party where they're served a nasty fight that they have nothing to do with. So I thought, 'How do I make this more relevant to
each and every one of them?'
"So I asked [my international company members], 'What makes you Taiwanese, Wen Chung-Lin? What makes you Turkish, Asli Bulbul?
What makes you Mexican, Erick Montes?' The piece is talking about patriotism, the word that we use in
a nasty way. They each have their
own way of answering or not answering it."
With the two performances of "Blind Date", one of the most memorable events at SAF07, he not only proved these points, but also showed that when integrity and creativity are applied to specific events, the outcome can be universally meaningful.
While "Blind Date" was inspired by the after-effects of 9/11 and the US's persistent war against terrorism, the issues presented to the audience go beyond their starting point and become truly global, thanks in part to the company's cultural diversity and, of course, Jones' vision.
Unlike many other Americans, Jones is always interested in what's going on in other parts of the world - the social unrest in Southern Thailand also made it in to this piece - and eager to make conversation with his audiences.
At the Q&A after one performance of "Blind Date" in Singapore, he turned the tables, asking many questions of us, the media.
"Art should be a thorn in somebody's side," he says twice at the end of our interview.
"I'm 55: I'm turning it over to you. Thank you very much."
For more on the Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company, visit www.billtjones.org.
The writer travelled to Singapore courtesy of the National Arts Council and the Singapore Tourism Board.
