Can You Bring It

By: Amos Lassen

"CAN YOU BRING IT: BILL T. JONES AND D-MAN IN THE WATERS"
Transcending Tragedy
Amos Lassen

"Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters" is a beautiful and moving documentary by Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz that shows the choreographers' body of work with the main focus here on Bill T. Jones's 1989 ballet D-Man in the Waters which is now considered one of the most important artistic works to come out of the AIDS epidemic.
The film seamlessly interweaves the cinema verité footage of LeBlanc's students struggling to learn and master a new dance language in the restaging of the piece between interviews with the original company members. We have archival clips of their 1989 performance, and shots of present-day Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performers as they swim, slide, leap and dive into the outstretched arms of others.
In New York in the 1980a, Jones and Zane, who were then a couple, set out to create a community that had a mission and a direction. However, that community spirit changed when AIDS took Zane, who died in 1988 at age 39.
After Zane's death, there was great anxiety among the dancers about whether Jones would go solo. But when he asked them to improvise to a piece of music, to share how they would enter a body of water, there was a sense of relief that the company would continue. In the process of creating "D-Man in the Waters", the dancers also found a healing that kept them going even with the pain they felt. The urgency of this piece was the AIDS illness of dancer Demian Acquavella, whose fighting spirit was celebrated in Jones's choreography. Although "D-Man," as the company affectionately nicknamed him, was deathly ill at the time of the ballet's premiere, we see a moving clip shows Jones tenderly carrying Acquavella across the stage.
Perhaps the most moving moment comes when LeBlanc is brought close to tears at her students' inability to connect emotionally with Jones's piece. They were born more than a decade after its original premiere and while they are able to do the steps and gestures, they cannot relate to the trauma out of which D-Man was created. To them, the AIDS crisis is a remote historical event. In rehearsal, Jones urges them to be brave, to be bad motherfuckers, to "bring it."
We see how the AIDs epidemic in the 1980's affected him and his dance company. The dance company survived and still exists today. It's fascinating, though, to watch Bill T. Jones show up to LeBlanc's dance classes and provide feedback and criticism to the students. LeBlanc educates them on the history of D-Man in the Waters while educating those who see the documentary.
"D-Man In the Waters," premiered in 1989 to great acclaim. It is so much more than a "response" to the AIDS epidemic and to think of it that way is to misrepresent the dance's origin, intent, and objective. It was created from the center of the disease, immediately following the death of the dance company's co-founder. Shortly after that, another company member contracted AIDS and the process of creating the dance became a "healing cathartic ritual."
"D-Man In the Waters" is a rigorous and relentless dance, requiring a high level of athletic endurance in the dancers. Each movement has an objective. Bodies fall to the ground, and swim across the floor, launched into the air, and carried offstage, flopped over another dancers' back. They are like soldiers on the battlefield. "D-Man in the Waters" is a group event that when it's done right, the dance becomes bigger than dance.
We are reminded of just how bad it really was "back then", when paramedics refused to move the dead body of Arnie Zane out to the ambulance, and the company members present wrapped him up in a sheet and did it themselves, a moment that we see re-created in the dance. They took care of their own. Trauma still exists in those who survived the AIDS era and "Can You Bring It" shows why.