I have just finished watching an interview with Bill T. Jones. I have seen him perform both live and on video. His story is touching and controversial. He is an authority.
But he is also a demagogue. There is a way of presenting oneself which has something incredibly irritating. Some sort of self-confidence and a way of declaring one's own experiences as universal truth.
You can only say this does not imply a similar attitude on stage if you've never seen Bill T. Jones on stage. The man constantly talks to the audience, his dancing is show-and-tell, it is lectures, sermons accompanied by dance, or joined by it, explained by it. And the tone of his voice has something distant, impersonal, that disturbed me. Now, I've also heard it during the interview. His powerful voice becomes too powerful, and sentences like "Dance is the first art." leave no space ofr anything else. No other areas, interests, points of view. And he is not saying this is what he thinks. Even when descirbing his most personal experiences, he says "The only way one can go through losing someone one has loved is by becoming what one has loved in that person". He doesn't say "I". He speaks for the rest of us. Demagogue? Prophet?
It is strange to discover that what I have been considering as an art of intimacy has the flavor of prophetic discourse. Can this be honest?
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