Jones – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

What happens to a work of art when time displaces it from its original context and from the impulse that inspired it? That is a question that can elicit dry theories. But in Can You Bring It ?: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, a new documentary by Tom Hurwitz and Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, the answer is passionate and moving.

Jones is a co-founder of the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company, a modern dance group. It grew out of the performer duo that Jones formed with his partner Zane, who wasn’t a dancer in the early 1970s.

Zane died in 1988 of AIDS-related lymphoma. The film gives a moving overview of their work-life collaboration before delving into the choices Jones made after Zane’s death. One of these decisions was the piece “D-Man in the Waters”.

The dance was inspired by a series of group improvisations. It was a mirror of the troop’s experiences, their struggles and their losses. As a choreography, it has since been performed by dozen of college and professional companies. “Can you bring it with you?” Jones asks a group of dancers at Loyola Marymount College in 2016 as they prepare the piece under the direction of Loo, a former member of the Jones / Zane Company.

These students have little knowledge of AIDS, so Jones and Loo ask them to find points in their lives where they struggle as part of a student community and in other ways. The cut between vintage recordings by Company Jones / Zane and the student production as well as recordings from another contemporary production of the piece – recorded with an intimacy on stage that is reminiscent of the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” – ensure an unusually lively documentary experience.

Can you bring it with you: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.

Mr. Friesen and Mr. Holmes decided to counter Mr. Jones’ version of the conversation with their own. The two men met through Marty DeRosa, a comedian from Chicago. Holmes, 33, grew up in the small town of Princeton in northern Illinois. His parents were members of the No-Name Fellowship, a religious cult. The cult broke up after the child of one of its members died after being denied medical treatment.

“My whole life has been influenced by a loud, tall, brazen cheat cult leader,” joked Holmes.

At the University of Missouri, the 36-year-old Friesian took an interest in American storytelling, including the conspiratorial stories Americans tell themselves.

He occasionally listened to Mr. Jones “from 9/11” when the Infowars host claimed to have predicted the attacks, Mr. Friesen said. “Then when I saw that he was getting involved with Trump, it felt weird,” said Mr Friesen.

Mr. Jones’ leap into presidential politics intrigued Mr. Friesen, who compared Mr. Jones to Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest and similarly sprawling, charismatic radio station in the 1930s who went from populism to virulent anti-Semitism to obscurity.

For Infowars, a return to the dark could be looming. After a dizzying audience surge during Mr. Jones’ live broadcast of the Capitol uprising on Jan. 6, daily traffic on the Infowars website has dropped to about a quarter of that day’s views, well below what it has seen in recent years, an analysis by SimilarWeb, an internet tracking company.

Social media traffic has never fully recovered after Mr. Jones was removed from most major platforms in 2018 and 2019 for violating guidelines on abusive behavior and posting posts promoting violence or hatred. Sites like Infowars can attract casual readers who follow viral posts on social media. However, according to SimilarWeb analysis, these referrals have decreased significantly as less than 1 percent of all traffic to Infowars is through social media.