ABOVE: “Can You Bring It.” (Photo courtesy Kino Lorber)
Once upon a time in New York City, Bill and Arnie formed a dance company.
They had met each other in 1971, falling in love at first sight across a crowded room at SUNY, and spent the next decade exploring their lives and their art together. Arnie was a photographer, at first, but his fascination with the human body and its movement – stoked by his collaborations with Bill, a dancer who was his muse and favorite photographic subject – soon led him to become a dancer himself.
Together they found acclaim as a team, creating their own works as part of the American Dance Asylum during a rise that culminated in the birth of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 1982. What followed was a brilliant and prolific period in which the two partners were among the most celebrated dance artists in the New York scene.
It was also a period when AIDS was ravaging the dance community, decimating the ranks of companies all over the city and casting its dark shadow over much of the work being produced at the time. Bill and Arnie, charmed as their lives had been, could not escape that shadow, and Arnie Zane died of AIDS-related lymphoma, at the age of 39, in 1988.
That bittersweet true-life love story would make for a profoundly moving documentary on its own strength alone, but the film delivered by co-directors Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz has its sights on something bigger than that. “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” is the story of what happened after Zane’s untimely passing, and it illuminates the way that art provides a channel for the personal to become universal and give expression to the shared trauma of an entire community.
The new documentary, which debuted at the DOC NYC film festival and opens in select theaters and virtual cinemas nationwide on July 16, is not about Bill and Arnie, nor even about Bill himself – though his name is in the title and he appears extensively onscreen, both in contemporary and archival footage – but about the seminal ballet which came in the wake of Arnie’s passing. “D-Man in the Waters” was mounted in 1989 by Jones and the company he and Zane had started, shaped by a creative process through which both he and his dancers found expression for the myriad emotions spawned by their loss.
Set to Felix Mendelssohn’s soaring Octet for Strings, the piece captures the infectious energy, innocence and will to survive of a beleaguered generation, propelled by the non-stop momentum of dancers hurling across the stage in a whirlwind of leaps, rolls, and slides. Though it gives full weight to the inevitable sorrow at its core, it nevertheless maintains an attitude of defiant celebration, embodying strength and resilience over loss, and is widely acknowledged today as one of the most significant works of art to come out of the AIDS.
“Can You Bring It” utilizes extensive interviews and archival footage to chronicle the history of the original “D-Man” – the title referring to the nickname for Demian Acquavella, a beloved company member who struggled against the virus during its creation before himself dying in 1990 – while also following a contemporary remount of the production by students at Loyola Marymount University.
Those students are led by none other than the film’s co-director, Rosalynde LeBlanc (herself a former member of the Jones/Zane Company and a leading figure in maintaining Jones’ legacy and pedagogy), and a large portion of the modern footage is centered around LeBlanc and Jones himself working with these young pre-professional dancers – most of them likely not even born when the AIDS crisis was raging – to help them find the personal connection required to unlock the power of the choreography.
Through the juxtaposition of the two creative efforts, original and modern, the movie provides a thoughtful – and unexpectedly gripping – exploration of the process by which art can be adapted to the needs of a different era without losing the essence at its core.
From an intellectual or aesthetic perspective, it’s a rich and nuanced close-up look at the hard work – as much of it mental and emotional as physical – that is the art of dance. What makes “Can You Bring It” profound enough to be an extension of the very piece it documents, however, is the wider lens that allows us to the piece in the context of both periods at once.
In 1989, Jones’ tour de force ballet gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that an emerging dance company felt as they were embattled by the AIDS epidemic – but for the group of young dancers tasked with re-interpreting the work three decades later, that experience is something from a history book.
To commit to the piece and perform it successfully, they must deepen their understanding of its power – and that means exploring what is at stake in their own personal lives during a troubling time that presents a whole new set of challenges, struggles, and heartbreaks. Needless to say, it’s work not cut out for the faint of heart.
Of course, as any fan of dance documentaries can tell you, the real thrill of such films is the opportunity to see the beauty of bodies in motion, captured up-close on camera and overpowering all other concerns through the transcendent urgency of its perfection. “Can You Bring It” does not disappoint on this level, either.
That should be no surprise. Bill T. Jones, after all, has continued throughout the decades, as has the company he founded with Arnie which still bears both of their names. He’s gone on to win Tony Awards (for choreographing “Spring Awakening” and “Fela!”), become a Kennedy Center Honoree, and be awarded a MacArthur Grant, over a long career in which he has choreographed over 120 works, and the dancing we see onscreen all bears the pedigree of having been shaped, either directly or indirectly, by his influence.
Add to that the presence of one co-director (LeBlanc) who has been intertwined with his work through most of her own career, and another (Hurwitz) who is one of the most honored documentary cinematographers working today, and you couldn’t ask for a better team to put together a great dance documentary.
Yet what makes a dance documentary truly great is its resonance within a larger world. Dance – and indeed, film, or any other form of art – is at its best when it serves to explore the experience of life itself, through all its levels and nuances. “Can You Bring It” does just that, offering up a lyrical and detailed portrait of artists and their work that is also rich in wisdom, compassion, empathy, diversity, and historical perspective – a testament to the power of art and the triumph of the human spirit.
In a world where the concept of community is often used more to divide us than to unite us, such ideas are a balm for the soul.
