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14 | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Culture

“There are a lot of emotions in these

stories,” the choreographer, dancer and

director Bill T. Jones said one evening

this summer as he rummaged through

some of the hundreds of folders and doc-

ument boxes that make up the Bill T.

Jones/Arnie Zane Company Archive,

which had just been acquired by the

New York Public Library for the Per-

forming Arts.

There were the outlines of a path-

breaking dance career that took Mr.

Jones from the outer edge of the avant-

garde to the cover of Time magazine to

Broadway to the artistic leadership of

New York Live Arts — and time cap-

sules of New York’s recent artistic his-

tory.

As he rifled through document boxes

— part of a collection that includes pho-

tos, production notes, costume designs,

film and audio materials, and even T-

shirts — Mr. Jones, 67, told some of those

stories contained in the archive, whose

acquisition was announced by the li-

brary last week.

He spoke about the politically

charged, beautiful dances exploring

race and sexuality that he made with

Arnie Zane, his partner in art and life,

who died of AIDS-related lymphoma in

1988. About his interactions with other
      artists at the intersection of the avant-
      garde and the New Wave in 1980s New
      York, including Keith Haring and Robert
      Mapplethorpe, and the toll taken by the
      AIDS crisis. And, somewhat reluctantly,
      about one of the great controversies of
      his career: how “Still/Here,” his monu-
      mental 1994 meditation on mortality,
      was dismissed as undiscussable “victim
      art” by the New Yorker critic Arlene
      Croce.
      Here are edited, condensed excerpts
      from that conversation.

EARLY DAYS: “BLAUVELT MOUNTAIN”

(1980)

BILL T. JONESBlauvelt is a town in Rock-

land County where Arnie and I [who

met at the State University of New York

at Binghamton] lived after we left Bing-

hamton, where we had been members of

a collective called the American Dance

Asylum, one of those crazy countercul-

ture collectives — asylum in the sense

that you could take refuge, and a place

you could be as insane as you want to be.

We were very impressed by Robert

Wilson’s “Ka Mountain” [performed

near Shiraz, Iran, over a week in 1972],

with the shah and all of these million-

aires, so we grandly named ours “Blau-

velt Mountain” — just a duet for these

two men. This was synthesizing contact

improvisation, [the choreographer]

Steve Paxton and Arnie’s love for Ger-

man constructivist theater. These cos-

tumes we wanted to be exaggerated, but

ultimately for some reason we did not

use them.

POSING FOR ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

(1985)

There are two things going on in this pic-

ture. Mapplethorpe had wanted to do

my photo, and as you know, he made a

celebrated series of naked black men.

Arnie Zane organized that the photo be

taken — but he couldn’t show my [pe-

nis]. And what’s more, it was not just an-

other bit of rough trade or black boy

flesh: This is Bill T. Jones. Arnie was

very concerned that I be understood as

a choreographer, and not a model. And

Arnie was very concerned that he be

strong, not the little guy being lifted

around by the black guy all the time. He

wanted this picture. And he’s dressed in

what he loved, jodhpurs. He’s like the

circus master.

COOL CENTRAL: OPENING NIGHT

OF “SECRET PASTURES” (1984)

Willi Smith. Keith Haring. Arnie Zane.

Bill T. Jones. Peter Gordon. That is the

’80s. Opening night of “Secret Pastures”

was Cool Central — Andy Warhol was in

the audience with Madonna, who were

good friends of Keith’s, at BAM. Arnie’s

mother and father came, and they had

not had an easy time of it, but they fi-

nally were impressed when they saw

Andy Warhol was sitting two rows back

and the place was sold out. It was a very

big, important moment.

What more can I say? The obvious is

that three out of five of us are no longer

here.

BECOMING A BODY PAINTING

BY KEITH HARING (1983)

Keith had a show at the Robert Fraser

gallery in London. He took four and a

half hours, and he meticulously painted

me with white body paint, and then he

said, “Oh, by the way, the press is com-

ing.” You can’t see it, but the paint, he

started from the top down, so the top

was already beginning to crack by the

time they came in. [The photographer]

Tseng Kwong Chi was the one telling me

to do flattened figures, as flat as possi-

ble, so I credit him: That’s why they’re

kind of stylized like this.

“LAST SUPPER AT UNCLE TOM’S

CABIN/THE PROMISED LAND” (1990)

Huck Snyder [who designed the sets

and costumes] was imitating what he

called children’s theater in the 19th cen-

tury. So it was all naïve, all these masks

that Huck Snyder designed.

It started as “Last Supper at Uncle

Tom’s Cabin Featuring 52 Handsome

Nudes.” Little Rickie was a kind of hip,

East Village novelty shop, and they had

everything from paints and pencils to

decks of kitsch playing cards called “

Handsome Nudes,” handsome male

nudes.

There was a concern — Jesse Helms

was on the floor of the Senate, waving

Mapplethorpe’s book, talking about filth

and so on. And at places we toured,

board members quit because they heard

this immoral show, anti-family show,

was coming. So it became: “Last Supper

at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised

Land.” The Promised Land: a place

where we were no longer afraid to be to-

gether, naked. It ended with a stage full

of people, standing naked, bathed in a

golden light and singing Julius Hemp-

hill’s “Children’s Song.”

Here’s a story for you. You see those

lyrics to “Wayfaring Stranger”? We

were invited to bring the piece to Spo-

leto [the arts festival in Italy]. We were

performing in a 16th-century chapel.

This one section was called “The Sup-

per.” The dancers are all doing an accu-

mulated series of gestures, moving from

chair to chair — some of them suggest

prayer, some of them suggest sex, all

sorts of thing. And I’m singing “Wayfar-

ing Stranger”: “I’m just a poor wayfar-

ing stranger.”

There was always an improvisation

which could spin in any way, a vocal im-

provisation on my part. And that night, I

began to ask the question in front of this

very Italian audience: “Where is the

pope tonight? Tonight, I am the pope.” I

think that’s what it was. And of course,

this piece ended with all these naked

people. The next day, I was denounced

by the Vatican.

“STILL/HERE” (1994):

MORTALITY THAT UNITES US

The archive contains a rich trove of ma-

terials related to the creation of “Still/

Here.” This lyrical exploration of mortal-

ity and survival included oral histories

that Mr. Jones, who had been open about

being H.I.V. positive, collected in work-

shops from people facing life-threat-

ening illnesses. He incorporated ma-

terial gathered in those workshops into

the piece itself, which was praised by The

New York Times as “a true work of art,

both sensitive and original,” but dis-

missed by The New Yorker as “victim

art.”

I thought: We’re doing a piece about

the journey of the body. We’re born. We

grow. If we’re fortunate, we find some-

one who we fall in love with, we repro-

duce, and then we die. That’s a kind of a

noble arc. That’s what it was going to be

about: mortality that unites us.

But it started an even bigger contro-

versy because of that article, the “vic-

tim art.” And it seemed so unfair, be-

cause it was not trying to say that we

were victims. Rather, the people who

did the workshops, people came to me, I

told them: I am a man. I am not a practi-

tioner of any kind. I’m just someone

who needs his hand held, trying to un-

derstand, myself — how can I live know-

ing what I know about my own body and

life and death? And people were very

generous. It was not supposed to be

people who were sick wanting unsick

people to feel sorry for them. It was sup-

posed to be giving information, it was

supposed to be about mortality and how

mortality connects us. And the rest of it

is kind of history, about how it came out.

Something that was very divisive and

very hurtful. In some ways, I’m still re-

covering from it now.

Mementos of a life in the arts

Bill T. Jones collaborated

with a slew of creators,

as his archives reveal

BY MICHAEL COOPER

TSENG KWONG CHI/MUNA TSENG DANCE PROJECTS, INC., NEW YORK; VINCENT TULLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Clockwise from below: Bill T. Jones in June; “Bill T. Jones, body painted by Keith

Haring” (1983); and Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Bill T. Jones” (1985), with Arnie Zane.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION; VINCENT TULLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

VINCENT TULLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Two years ago, Taylor Swift was

painted into a corner, and lashed out.

“Reputation,” her sixth album, was her

darkest, her most aggrieved and, not

coincidentally, her most stylistically

experimental. She was already a pop

star, but “Reputation” was when she

arrived into the understanding that

klieg lights can scald. Often a conscien-

tious objector, she became a combat-

ant.

Reception was mixed; “Reputation”

is a genuinely great album, if not a

particularly appreciated one. It pushed

the boundaries of what people expect

from Swift — the kind of singer she

could be, the kind of collaborators she

could work with, the moods she could

adopt. By far, it’s her least commer-

cially successful effort.

Which says something quite loudly.

Swift’s antagonists have always been

intimates, and the joy she’s taken in

either loving them or eviscerating

them has always been evident, and

thrilling. But lashing out against the

Kanye-Kardashian industrial complex

was an awkward fit, and also bad

business.

“Lover,” her reassuringly strong

seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a

recalibration and a reaffirmation of old

strengths. It’s a transitional album

designed to close one particularly

bruised chapter and suggest ways to

move forward — or in some cases, to

return to how things once were. Once

again, Swift’s concerns are largely

interior: who to love, how to love, how

to move on when love is gone.

The album’s power is encapsulated

on “Paper Rings” and “Cornelia

Street,” two songs in the middle that

couldn’t be more different. “Paper

Rings,” written and produced with Jack

Antonoff, is jumpy punk-pop, vibrating

with almost a nervous energy. Swift

talk-sings about the flush of a new

obsession that becomes something

deeper: “Went home and tried to stalk

you on the internet/Now I’ve read all

of the books beside your bed.” Bubbly

and wise, it’s peak Swift.

That’s immediately followed by

“Cornelia Street,” another Antonoff

coproduction, but one much more in

line with the atmospheric gloom of

“Reputation.” Here, Swift is coy and

lost in reverie: “‘I rent a place on

Cornelia Street,’ I say casually in the

car/We were a fresh page on the desk,

filling in the blanks as we go.”

These songs have one thing in com-

mon, though. Near each bridge, the

music thins out, and Swift sings less

busily, leaning on her voice’s natural

contours and emphasizing the way she

effortlessly communicates fragility.

They are jolts of the personal, a re-

minder that there is a person inside

the song, something Swift has some-

times overlooked in her quest for

bigness.

On “Lover,” there isn’t a consistent

musical throughline so much as a slate

of options, some familiar and some

new. “I Forgot That You Existed,” the

opener, is cheery, almost glib — a

lyrical disinfectant for the “Reputa-

tion” era. “You Need to Calm Down”

has a sleek viciousness to it. As a song,

it didn’t benefit from the simultaneous

release of a heavy-handed video em-

phasizing Swift’s L.G.B.T.Q. allyship.

And there are duds: The shimmery

“London Boy,” presumably about her

paramour, the British actor Joe Alwyn,

is an effective argument against trans-

national romance.

If she leans in to a particular pop

style, it’s the one she and Antonoff

have been honing for her last two

albums, with thick, ethereal arrange-

ments that suggest the scores to films

where children discover fantasy

worlds. The best example here is “Cru-

el Summer,” on which Swift sings in

several of her signature voices — the

question-mark syllables that shoot to

the sky, the hard-felt smears and the

childlike chants: “I don’t want to keep

secrets just to keep you!”

But in the middle of “Lover” comes a

hard brake: “Soon You’ll Get Better,”

an intimate acoustic song about Swift’s

mother, Andrea, who is battling cancer.

Swift was never a completely unvar-

nished performer, but early in her

career, she cut extremely close to the

bone. Here, agonized harmonies by the

Dixie Chicks serve as an empathetic

swaddle as Swift is lyrically immedi-

ate: “Holy orange bottles, each night I

pray to you/desperate people find

faith, so now I pray to Jesus too.”

The jolting specificity of these words

only underscores how Swift has been

retreating from detail in her lyrics,

once the cornerstone of her power.

Broad strokes can be just as emotion-

ally potent as diaristic impulses, but

from her earliest songs, her lyrics have

always communicated a bracing

amount of information in digestible

fashion, a consistently stunning high-

wire act.

The shift in emphasis from words to

music on her recent albums has left

her on less steady ground. But there is

no Max Martin or Shellback here —

superproducers who helped guide her

recent pop tracks — which means no

cheat code. And in her songwriting, in

addition to Antonoff she collaborates

with Louis Bell and Joel Little, who

have been some of the most successful

songwriters in pop over the last two

years, but who don’t approach the

power of Swift’s pointillism.

“Soon You’ll Get Better” captures

that energy, though, and also points to

a quiet thread on this album: There is

country here — nods, winks. Swift’s

ease with it is like flirting with an ex.

Take “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” a

song about how relationships that are

ending never seem to end, which could

be a Kelsea Ballerini song: “I get

drunk but it’s not enough/’cause the

morning comes and you’re not my

baby.” Or the title track, which has

echoes of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,”

but also sounds like a steroidal take on

the alt-country of the 1990s.

Were Swift ever to explicitly return

to the genre that catapulted her to

global acclaim, she’d be as fluent as the

day she left town. But it’s more provoc-

ative to wonder — especially after her

experiments with trap production on

“Reputation” failed to connect — if

Swift remains committed to pop cen-

trism, what shape that might take.

There have been two major jolts to

Swift’s musical grammar over her

13-year career: on “Red,” when she

first attempted pumped-up pop, and

completely rebuilt the foundation of

her sound; and on “Reputation,” which

will probably stand as the outer bound-

ary of the risks she’ll take. As perform-

ers get older, and more successful,

their willingness to pivot typically

softens as well.

So it’s intriguing that “Lover” offers

a whole set of newish propositions,

most of them promising, especially

“Paper Rings.” The excellent and

pointed “The Man” is a stern synth-

pop take on sexism that’s also Swift at

her funniest. “Every conquest I had

made would make me more of a boss

to you,” she deadpans, running down a

litany of the double standards she’s

been dodging for years. In this alter-

nate timeline, she avers, “I’d be just

like Leo in Saint-Tropez.”

The strutting “I Think He Knows”

delivers a sweet intention with a blend

of elation and petulance. And on “The

Archer” — which is redolent of Cyndi

Lauper’s “Time After Time” — she’s

restrained and a little imperious, using

her voice as a mood piece.

On an album premised on leaving

the past behind, these are the songs

that suggest a way forward. In recent

years, it’s been clear that the less Swift

sets her own terms, the more chal-

lenges she’ll face. And so on “Lover,”

she’s back to steering. Being a pop star,

she’s learned, is different from being

yourself — except when it isn’t.

A return to matters that stir her heart

Taylor Swift onstage in July in New York.

EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBUM REVIEW

Taylor Swift’s latest record

reaffirms old strengths

and hints at next steps

BY JON CARAMANICA

RELEASED

was an awkward fit, and also bad

RELEASED

was an awkward fit, and also bad

business.

RELEASED

business.

“Lover,” her reassuringly strong

RELEASED

“Lover,” her reassuringly strong

seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a

RELEASED

seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a

recalibration and a reaffirmation of old

RELEASED

recalibration and a reaffirmation of old

RELEASED strengths. It’s a transitional albumstrengths. It’s a transitional album

BY

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TELEGRAM:

“Lover,” her reassuringly strong

seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a

TELEGRAM:

seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a

recalibration and a reaffirmation of old

TELEGRAM:

recalibration and a reaffirmation of old

strengths. It’s a transitional album

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strengths. It’s a transitional album

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TELEGRAM:

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