Theater of War

Set me as a seal upon your heart. For love is strong as death.

(Song of Solomon)

Bill T. Jones's Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray—which has concluded its New York premiere run at Rose Theater for the Lincoln Center Festival—is a work of heartbroken yet tenacious, resilient love.

Given its world premiere at Illinois's Ravinia Festival in 2009--the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth--this 90-minute, multimedia piece takes inspiration from the life and milieu of this American icon. But before leading us to Lincoln, Jones first draws our attention to Shayla-Vie Jenkins, a lovely Black woman dancing on a circular, spotlit extension of the main stage. She flows with delicate elegance through a seamless pattern of movements as a voice-over recording itemizes parts of the human body, from head to toe.

I am a Black woman, too, and as the voice calmly, caressingly listed these parts, my mind quickly flicked to the blood memory of the slave auction block. That thought flickered out just as swiftly, for I sensed that Jones wanted us to hold two other thoughts in reasonable balance. The first, to be sure, is that illusory, ephemeral flow of dance. The second is the sweaty, effortful reality that gives rise to dance, the discrete bodily structures working in concert to make the fantasy possible. With the auction image gone, I found this juxtaposition almost unbearably moving, a tribute not only to dance and dancers but also to the notion of the democratic body politic, forged from so many individual entities, each with distinct identity, history and concerns. Is the American ideal of a strong, united people capable of respect and harmony, a dream as illusory as a body dancing on a stage?

In examining the life of our nation's heroic, martyred president, Jones has said, he grappled with Lincoln's human complexities. This work touches upon some incidents from Lincoln's biography, including his assassination, but it does not engage with that complexity in any way specific to the man himself. Jones seems far more interested in repeatedly pulling back from Lincoln to afford a better view of the restless ghosts from those times that now float through our own. He recognizes something potentially dangerous—and because he's got an artist's courageous heart, potentially redeeming—in the flaring contentiousness of our political life today, when a man of African and European-American heritage now sits at the head of a country that once enslaved African people.

Long stretches of Fondly Do We Hope's ensemble movement, as well as some choreography for individuals, puzzled me. Most notably, Paul Matteson—who often assumes the Lincoln role—seemed, at best, unrelievedly pleasant. Matteson's moves are big and flung; he is hoisted and ported by the ensemble, as if riding atop a throne of marble. But this performer never transcends blandness, even when engaged in heated debate. But if Jones's movement had been more expressive in itself, it's still not clear that Matteson would possess the command to carry it. On the other hand, Asli Bulbul (in and out of her role as Mary Todd Lincoln) and Jennifer Nugent, like Jenkins, make the most of movement pieces that are perfectly cut, polished and displayed. I am tempted to think that Jones's intentions snap into sharper focus when the dancer is female, but Jenkins, Bulbul and especially the always interesting Nugent, really bring oomph to the challenge.

Although the choreography largely disappoints, the score astonishes. Jerome Begin, Christopher Antonio William Lancaster and George Lewis, Jr. contribute a rich blend of Americana in their original compositions and arrangements of traditional music, with delightfully beautiful singing by Clarissa Sinceno and Lewis. I appreciate the reticent simplicity of Bjorn Amelan's set design. The filmy, translucent curtain encircling the main stage reminded me of a screen pulled closed around the bed of a hospitalized patient, perhaps one injured in our Civil War or in Afghanistan. For long stretches, this curtain distanced us from the enclosed dancing ensemble.

Democracy can look like chaos. Is the body politic ill, broken? Is it actually in the frightening throes of a healing crisis? The visitor quietly entering a hospital room, wants to protect, to be gentle with, the patient suffering or recovering within.

Stay me, comfort me. For I am sick of love.

(Song of Solomon)

When Amelan's tender curtain parts, revealing a stand of white columns, it demarcates hallowed space set apart for the exercise of the ancient Greek ideals adopted by the founders of this nation. I wonder if we are still capable of “believing in great men,” as Jones says of himself in the work's text. I wonder, indeed, if believing in some great man out there is exactly what we need to be doing right now, but I trust Jones has entertained that thought, too.

“Lincoln is a story we tell ourselves,” says Jones's narrator, Jamyl Dobson. And just as Americans continue to interrogate and refine this narrative, Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray reportedly has been much reworked since its world premiere last year at Ravinia. Despite visual beauty in design and performance, the work is blunted by choreography dissociated from the work's complex ideas and copious text.

Lincoln Center Festival continues through next Sunday, July 25. For a schedule of the remaining programs and ticketing information, click here.