You Walk? is another one of Bill T. Jones’s huge pageants on the evils and the blessings of civilization. Presented by the Dance Umbrella last weekend at the Emerson Majestic, the evening-length work is a kind of postmodern Dance of the Ages. Humanity emerges from the forest primeval; learns to fight, love, and communicate; undergoes religious conversion and suffering; and is finally transfigured, not by belief in spirits but through acceptance of its own naked, collective power.

This is my interpretation, of course, and the work could probably be read several other ways. It’s put together with so many pieces of seemingly disparate but beguiling material that the viewer can almost pick and choose which stimuli to track. You Walk? was commissioned by the city of Bologna to celebrate something called the “Latin-Mediterranean” culture, and it includes among its production elements Portuguese popular songs in fado style, transcribed Yanomami chants, an Italian-Swiss Baroque opera, John Cage, backdrops using high-tech computer imaging, reconstructed medieval dances, and a pair of fluffy pink clogs. It all takes place in an atmospheric space of shifting scrims (by Bjorn G. Amelan), lights (Robert Wierzel) and projections (Paul Kaiser).

Bill T. Jones is a postmodernist with the idealistic heart of a modern dancer, and these two æsthetic tendencies don’t always reinforce each other. Jones the modern dancer thinks in movement abstraction sometimes, so the evening begins with a circle of solidarity; then the 10 dancers hover and pounce while creating the whirring, high-pitched soundscape of a jungle. And it ends after they lie down one by one, their piled-up bodies forming a sustained image of death or unification or just monolithic calm.

The postmodernist Jones delights in the clash of materials, and in not always having to sort them out for the audience. He’s much more likely to have 10 people on the stage doing 10 different things than he is to organize neat ensembles of harmonious movement. This is not just an æsthetic choice but a political one. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company prides itself on the diversity of its members, and though the body types and training are a little more consistent than they used to be, he does allow for and even showcase the dancers’ dissimilarities. You come away from a performance with distinct impressions of each one.

You Walk? itself expresses this twofold æsthetic. The first act, comprising five uninterrupted sections, develops from its ritualistic beginnings into an increasingly formal, possibly symbolic series of actions. The “animals” acquire dependencies, hostilities, and language. Yips, growls, and warning screeches become connected syllables and insistent vocalizing. A shamanistic figure (Toshiko Oiwa) presides over a mysterious ceremony. Fragmentary courtly dances suggest the advent of civilization by way of the missionaries, who imposed Christian ideas of Heaven and Hell, submission and sin.

Part one ends with an obscure 18th-century opera that sounds like Vivaldi and has an itinerant Jesuit (the composer, Domenico Zipoli) making converts among the Amazonian natives. The encounter between tribal inhabitants and European zealots is intriguing but just barely hinted at in the stage action. Jones uses a scholarly program note to raise the issues of colonialism and cultural identity. In the role of teacher, he appears throughout the stage action to read from the Lusiads, an account of exploration, discovery, and conquest by the 16th-century Portuguese writer Luiz De Camões.

After intermission, the evening gets lighter, more personal and improvisational. Oiwa and Eric Bradley dance a wary duet; they’re mirrored by others silhouetted behind a scrim. There’s a long section of foxtrot-tangoish social dancing that leads to some raunchy seductions. Jones dances a solo to one of the fado selections, but as reader and patriarch, he seems alienated from the closely knit ensemble of dancers.

The inarticulate calls and shouts that punctuated even the cruel civilities of the Church now evolve into an invented but expressive language. Daniel Russell Kubert inspects each dancer and harangues the audience with funny insults.

Then the group gather in one part of the stage to watch one another show off, with exaggerated reactions. Alexandra Beller tries to make headway with one foot stuck to the floor. Ayo Janeen Jackson teeters on her toes with her body sprung backwards. Oiwa plays peekaboo bent over and looking through her legs. After the exhibitionists are mocked and welcomed back into the group, Oiwa leads them all out in a parade of individual walks.

They reappear in various stages of nudity — Bill T. Jones’s signifier for vulnerability, total self-revelation, beauty — and the piece subsides into its peaceful conclusion.

Issue Date: March 29-April 5, 2001