BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY.

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY

BAM OPERA HOUSE OCTOBER 6-11, 1998

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH CARMAN

Bill T. Jones has never been afraid to ecstatically expose his soul. His latest work, We Set Out Early ... Visibility Was Poor, also exposes a more contemplative and less political side of Jones's choreography and revels in the sheer movement that is part of his trademark. The New York premiere was presented as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's sixth annual Next Wave Festival.

Divided into three parts, the work utilizes compositions by three composers, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and Peteris Vasks, all of which evoke a sense of drama, but in entirely separate ways. The first section, "On the TSII," introduces Jones's splendid company of dancers, who interact and disperse rapidly as they sear their individuality into the choreography. These are Martha Graham's acrobats of God updated to the next millennium. Miguel Anaya, dressed in a sexy tattered skirt designed by Liz Prince and displaying a matador's attitude, dances teasingly with the quicksilver Christian Canciani; Odile Reine-Adelaide promenades elegantly while Maya Saffrin sasses up the stage.

The score, Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, serves the dancers well with its wealth of tango, waltz, and jazz rhythms, and the spare but handsome set by Bjorn G. Amelan, including a prominent diagonal path on the floorcloth, prepares the observer's eye for what appear to be any number of journeys upon which the dancers may be embarking.

"Cape Bardo," the second section, sets a mood of Japanese slow-motion stillness, similar to that of Jerome Robbins's Watermill (1972), that tests the audience's patience. An oval paper-lantern moon illuminates the stage with otherwise minimal lighting by Robert Wierzel, and a large cart is lifted into the sky. Eric Bradley emerges as a lone prominent figure whose journey is quiet but significant.

What distinguishes We Set Out Early from Still/Here, Jones's controversial 1994 work about illness and dying, is that the more recent piece is a distillation of thoughts and emotions, an approach that is decidedly metaphoric and lyric. Jones is clearly still touching on the subject of loss, but this time he replaces dialogue with silence or animal sounds and strives for a dreamlike quality rather than a literal one.

In the final section, "Voiceland," tensions run higher as Vasks's score, recalling sound tracks by Bernard Herrmann for Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, animates the dancers. Mumbling gibberish, they move in packs, stamping their feet rhythmically as Toshiko Oiwa sprints onstage, as if with dire news, then retraces her steps repeatedly in an ebb and flow. Germaul Barnes and Bradley, perhaps acting as alter egos for Jones and Zane, struggle to keep their common boundary throughout the ensuing chaos. As the curtain rapidly descends, the dancers rush offstage, leaving Barnes and Bradley stationary at stage right, and bestowing on the audience a mixture of elation, grief, and an inkling of the desire for peace that Jones must be feeling ten years after Zane's death from AIDS.

The outstanding cast, whom Jones treasures for, as he says, "their specialness," is completed by Daniel Russell Kubert, Rosalynde LeBlanc, and Alexandra Belier, who is built like the heftiest of burlesque queens and moves like a goddess.