Bill T. Jones asks the audience to meet the dancers halfway, for it is here where the story really happens. “It’s more than movement, because movement is not enough”, says Jones. Each work in the “Analogy” trilogy asks more questions than it answers. Tonight’s World Premiere of “Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant” speaks to struggle, survival and what is a life well-lived.
In a KHOL interview with Bill T. Jones says, “Art-making is about participation in the world of ideas. When we look, we’re looking, thinking and feeling. We own what we’re seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling. When you sit in a dance concert, your mind wanders. But that’s ok. Why did it wander and when did it come back…almost like meditation.”
For those unfamiliar with Jones’ art form, it is one informed by a notion of the 1970s called task-based choreography. The work is not a formula- you ask yourself a series of questions and you make a work based on those. “Ambros” is a result of Jones’ re-reading of the celebrated historical novel “The Emigrants” by German novelist W.G. Sebald. Any literary enthusiasts out there? Jones was so intrigued by how Sebald blended his research and personal stories in his writing and wanted to explore this process in his own work, using the abstract language of dance.
You, the audience, will not only see the story of a German emigrant (circa 1911 and beyond) and his life with and eventually without his wealthy Jewish master, but you will often feel “your heart is in your throat, your mind stretching to decipher the various incoming information- dance, video, music, spoken word. Dance theater, after all, is a language that can take you inside human experience in nonliteral ways”, Meg Daly writes in the Buckrail article.
“Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant” is the final installment of Jones’ “Analogy” trilogy, seven years in the making. It is not necessary that the audience has seen part 1 “Analogy/Dora” or part 2 “Analogy/Lance” to understand this third and final work. All three weave together dance, spoken word and music.
Celebrate this fearless choreographer and his team of extraordinary dancers as they take storytelling to an entirely new level.
A World Premiere by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant
Friday, July 21 / Tonight
Saturday, July 22 / Tomorrow
8PM, The Center Theater
$45-55 Adult, $25 Student
See the WORLD PREMIERE of Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant tonight and tomorrow night at 8PM in the Center for the Arts.
