Arts I Second That Boo, Bill T. Jones
According to the (S.C.) State’s Spoleto Festival blog, the choreographer-performer Bill T. Jones last week returned to the stage after a performance to call out a guy who was booing his performance. When shouting “You come on down” twice didn’t elicit a response, Jones resorted to the macho “I dare you to come down,” and a silver-haired man appeared at the footlights. Somebody else in the audience, most of whom had prostrated themselves in the now-perfunctory standing ovation after Jones’ anti-war piece Blind Date, called out to Jones, “Let it go. A statement was made,” and then said, as if he, too, were being bullied by the dancer, “It was great.” “I know it was great,” the famously self-righteous Jones said.
Shouted the silver-haired man, “I disagree. I’m giving you my message.” “What do you disagree with?” responded Jones. A choreographer named a MacArthur genius, Jones danced “Blind Date” in a suit, sometimes barefoot, often as counterpoint to a soldier, in a multi-media work clearly anti-war, anti-dogma and not so fond of patriotism, either. The man leaned further over the balcony rail and announced, “I think it was a cliche disguised not very cleverly as third-rate art. “Boo!” Somewhere in this a wit yelled, “Four more years.” … To the man booing, Jones called out, “You’re hiding behind your politics.” He said the boos were about the politics of the art, not the art itself. He got the last word, something along the lines of, You stay out of my art; I’ll stay out of your politics.
In response to this, the State’s writer Claudia Smith Brinson wrote, “Booing is not intended as a conversation opener. And while the community agreement at sports events is to cheer and boo and do The Wave, the agreement is different at art events. … As Jones noted, people who don’t like an art performance ordinarily just leave. When Jones tried to force a dialogue, he lost some ground. But the effort was doomed, anyway. People who boo don’t want a conversation. They want to hear themselves boo.”
First of all, was this silver-haired scourge actually a rabid right-wing Bushhead, or did Jones just assume he was? If he ever came out as one, Brinson didn’t report it. What’s quoted above is the extent of what came out about the booer in his exchange with Jones. And while Brinson interviewed Jones later”As a member of society, I feel hamstrung … I make works about my feelings,” she didn’t bother talking to the booer, who might have had something more interesting to say than Jones’s self-involved hooey.
Jones’s logic is that since he feels disenfranchised in the world, he gets to disenfranchise anybody who disagrees with him in his theater: Yeah, that’s progress. Plus, this idea that sports fans can boo but arts fans shouldn’t is ridiculous, and is part of what makes the arts seem so bloodless. When people are given the options of outright dismissal (Jones’ talk of displeased audience members who “just leave,” thereby getting out of the hair of artists who have the more important task after a performance of soaking in the audience’s worship) or sycophantic panting, who can be surprised when they choose dismissal?
Bill T. Jones, you’re a coward.
One time in Chicago I booed actor Brian Bedford in a hideous, self-absorbed performance of "School for Wives" (fer instance, for three acts NO ONE picked up prop someone had clumsily dropped on the stage in Act 1). One single, short "Boo" at the curtain call. People around me were having heart attacks. 'My God, why are you booing?' Um, because the whole show, and especially BB's perfunctory performance, stunk. This is the flip side of the Tyranny of the Standing Ovation (paraphrasing the NYT here), which has become meaningless. We're not supposed to say Boo and we are supposed to stand for anything presented to us. Phooey. Take a risk with an audience. Be genuine.