Never one to shy away from the provocative, Bill T. Jones tackles murder and morality in the latest production of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, “Chapel/Chapter.” Central to the piece is a question posed by Jones: “How can this event suggest the uneasy distance our mediatized era helps create between the passive observers which we are and the disturbing, sometimes incomprehensible ‘news items’ we encounter every day?” Across a sharply lit white floor-grid surrounded by a red velvet-draped theater, the dancers explore this question in three different repeating narratives both sung and spoken by live performers. The audience sits in pew-like seats surrounding the stage and as jury/congregation watches the three true stories—two of them high-profile murder cases and one a personal narrative from one of the dancers—being enacted before them on the stark, unforgiving stage. (Tamara Matthews)
