Bill T. Jones's A Quarreling Pair, which regrettably closes tomorrow evening at BAM's Gilman Opera House, is a huge, generous apparition--95 minutes of full-tilt, multidimensional vaudeville of the mind. Blown up from a four-page, two-character puppet play written by Jane Bowles in 1945, it has become a thing of delicate and bodacious beauty, oddity, vulgarity, fierce insight and poetry in equal measure. It speaks of the nakedness, the vulnerability of the artist who ventures out into the messy, messy world.
Every artist who put his or her shoulder to this wheel gave of the highest quality: Bill T. Jones (conception, direction, originial text, and choreography in collaboration with Janet Wong and the company), Bjorn G. Amelan (set design--wow!), Robert Wierzel (lighting), Liz Prince (costume design--heavenly!); Janet Wong (video design); Sam Crawford (sound design--crafty!), and the excellent team of Wynne Bennett, Christopher William Antonio Lancaster and George Lewis, Jr. (composition and performance of original music). Jones's sublime performers include Antonio Brown, Asli Bulbul, Peter Chamberlin, Leah Cox, Maija Garcia, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leonard, I-Ling Liu, Paul Matteson and Erick Montes with Tracy Ann Johnson.
Sure to stand as one of the highlights of the current season and of Jones's exceptional career, A Quarreling Pair should be seen now and revisited. I can barely wait for its return.
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
718-636-4100
Bill T. Jones, in Giddy Mood, Unveils Comic `Pair'
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com
(originally in Bloomberg News, October 2, 2008)
Every artist who put his or her shoulder to this wheel gave of the highest quality: Bill T. Jones (conception, direction, originial text, and choreography in collaboration with Janet Wong and the company), Bjorn G. Amelan (set design--wow!), Robert Wierzel (lighting), Liz Prince (costume design--heavenly!); Janet Wong (video design); Sam Crawford (sound design--crafty!), and the excellent team of Wynne Bennett, Christopher William Antonio Lancaster and George Lewis, Jr. (composition and performance of original music). Jones's sublime performers include Antonio Brown, Asli Bulbul, Peter Chamberlin, Leah Cox, Maija Garcia, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leonard, I-Ling Liu, Paul Matteson and Erick Montes with Tracy Ann Johnson.
Sure to stand as one of the highlights of the current season and of Jones's exceptional career, A Quarreling Pair should be seen now and revisited. I can barely wait for its return.
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
718-636-4100
Bill T. Jones, in Giddy Mood, Unveils Comic `Pair'
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com
(originally in Bloomberg News, October 2, 2008)
At the Next Wave Festival, a Woman Wanders in Search of Herself
by Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, October 1, 2008
by Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, October 1, 2008
Your words, and the video clip, make me long for an opportunity to this work up close and personal.
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