Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in African American Studies
Episode: Ariel Nereson, "Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
Description: On the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, renowned choreographer and director Bill T. Jones developed three tributes: Serenade/The Proposition, 100 Migrations, and Fondly Do We Hope . . . Fervently Do We Pray. These widely acclaimed dance works incorporated video and audio text from Lincoln's writings as they examined key moments in his life and his enduring legacy. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past (U Michigan Press, 2022) explores how these works provided both an occasion and a method by which democracy and history might be reconceived through movement, positioning dance as a form of both history...