Project Description
Still/Here explores and contemplates survival, life, and art through dance and music. Still/Here is a two-act, evening-length dance-theater piece (premiered 1994) with a visual score made from edited interviews with people who were or are facing life-threatening illnesses. These people participated in "survival workshops" that Bill T. Jones ran in different cities across the country. In the dance-theater genre, the drama weaves spoken word, movement, music, and special effects into a mixed-media spectacle without the continuous narrative or specific time frame of traditional theater. In the first half, the choreography features recitations and movement vignettes created by survival workshop participants. The tone of the piece evokes a positive and poignant faith that supportive friends and self-awareness can help even those imperiled by life-threatening illnesses (AIDS, cancer, and depression) to survive. A video environment created by media artist Gretchen Bender included medical photography, footage from the survival workshops, and computer imagery.

Civic Engagement/Dialogue Activities
Still/Here grew from dance-oriented "survival workshops" that Jones conducted in 1993 in 10 American cities. Those who took part, aged 11 to 75, all faced or had previously faced a life-threatening illness. With Gretchen Bender, Jones videotaped workshop participants as they talked about and mimed their interior experiences.

A controversial and now notorious critique of Still/Here by dance critic Arlene Croce appeared in The New Yorker (1994). In her review she called the work "victim art," and unworthy of serious artistic critique. The review unleashed months of debate and discussions in conversations, classrooms, and the media about the responsibility of the critic. The New Yorker printed four pages of responses. Other publications jumped in. At the end of the national tour of Still/Here in Pittsburgh, the Dance Critics Association annual conference devoted several sessions to the controversy, including a Town Hall speakout and a keynote by Jones.

Information Sources
Siegel, Marcia, B. "Virtual Criticism and the Dance of Death." The Drama Review. Cambridge, Massachusetts: New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Summer 1996. Yablonsky, Linda. "Two post modern choreographers, Bill T. Jones and Pina Bausch, recently mounted elaborate dance-theater productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music." Art in America. New York: Brant Art Publications, Inc., March 1995.