Arlene Croce, The New Yorker's dance critic at the time of 'Still/Here''s première, wrote about the piece in the magazine, even though she refused to see it. In an essay titled 'Discussing the Undiscussable,' she argued that by including dying people in his work, Jones had put himself 'beyond the reach of criticism.' She called Jones-a MacArthur-winning provocateur who had just been profiled in the magazine by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.-'the John the Baptist of victim art,' the most coercive avatar of a 'pathology' that she blamed on the 'permissive thinking of the sixties' and a utilitarian bias within the arts bureaucracy.
From these sessions- during which participants, in verbal and movement exercises, were asked to recall the moments they learned of their diagnoses and to imagine their deaths- Jones took movement material and video testimonials and built them into a work performed by the dance company that he had founded with his romantic and creative partner Arnie Zane (who had died of AIDS in 1988).
Few, if any, dance performances of the nineties provoked more controversy than 'Still/Here,' a multimedia work from 1994 by the choreographer Bill T. Jones, which is now getting a thirtieth-anniversary revival, from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.
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