Kevin Fitzsimons/Courtesy Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo
Bill T. Jones
Seeking superstardom in the contemporary cultural world? Unleash your “scatter-shot mind.”
So advised Bill T. Jones. He told an Arts & Ideas festival audience that crafting a meaningful modern piece involves a lot of bouncing around.
And he demonstrated what he meant.
Jones’s pinball mind was running at top speed Tuesday as he and poet Elizabeth Alexander sat down for the “Ideas” talk at the Yale Center For British Art.
C.J. Gunther. Photo
Elizabeth Alexander
Alexander, who moderated the event, asked Jones how he had managed to co-created, co-written, and directed the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Fela. Jones chalked it up to the many people who support him and his vision and his “scattershot mind”.
Later, he elaborated on this thought with a glimpse at his creative process: “I want to put things together, watch ideas colliding … I want to make a pure experience where 1+1=3.” With any kind of project, he aspires to make final product larger than life, to the point of deliberately letting or forcing his audience scratch their heads and wonder.
Over the course of the talk Jones bounced from ideas of modern sculpture, to “the patrimony of America” (which he believes is “advertising”), to his belief that “artists don’t always make the best parents — you have to be somewhat self-involved.”
Following on the heels of the success of “Fela”, for which he won the “Best Choreography” Tony award, Jones is considering, unsurprisingly, a bevy of next moves. He wondered out loud whether he should take the job of directing a musical of the life of Motown producer Barry Gordy; then, in perfect keeping with his “scattershot” mentality, Jones gauged the audience reaction to the announcement of this option. “OK, I see a lot of you clearly know Motown,… ‚” he said, contemplating.
Alexander asked Jones whether “artists should go to the shores of death,” Jones replied with admiration for the Buddhist philosophy that we should live each day “like a rehearsal for one’s death.” He recalled sharing the stage with Allen Ginsberg a month before he died at a panel-discussion called “The Art of Dying” and spoke of choreography he had assembled for a performance piece about cancer victims. But he ended his answer with a confession, apropos of his multitrack nature: His favorite movie of the year was Babies, which he grinningly admitted, “is about the other part.”