Film Forum

1:15 & 6:00 ONLY

The New York Times’s rave review for Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters, termed it “a new work that marks a new lease on inspired creativity… the kind of piece that sets audiences cheering” (Anna Kisselgoff). The work was dedicated to former company member Demian Acquavella (1958-1990) who was diagnosed with AIDS and had to leave the creative process when he became too ill. His colleagues called him “D-Man.” Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company presented the work just a year after Arnie Zane’s death from AIDS at age 39. Jones describes their relationship: “Arnie and I were a couple. We were a continent of two.” CAN YOU BRING IT, made by Rosalynde LeBlanc, a former dancer with the Company, and Tom Hurwitz, son of influential Martha Graham dancer Jane Dudley, is a smart, inspired portrait of the brilliant, charismatic dancer/choreographer. Built around a current production of D-Man (directed by LeBlanc), the film records the struggle of today’s young dancers to interpret the emotional anguish of the early AIDS epidemic era, from which Jones’s creation sprung.

USA      2019      90 MINS.      KINO LORBER

Presented with support from the R.G. Rifkind Foundation Endowment for Queer Cinema and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund.

Reviews

“A gripping ode to creativity and to the resiliency of the human spirit.”
– Mikhail Baryshnikov

“Goes to the very heart of the vital role art plays in our society during times of social crisis.”
– Henry Louis Gates Jr, historian

“An intimate journey through loss and creation. The tactile choreography physicalizes the way that dance has offered safety, visibility, and power to people so often denied basic dignity. The cinematography puts the viewer inside the movement. The camera travels within and amidst dancers in the flurries of runs and jumps, the intricacies of partnering, the momentum of group dynamics...the power of D-Man in the Waters is in its fierce insistence on presence, on vitality in the face of hardship.”
– Hallie Chametzky, The Brooklyn Rail

“Fascinating. A kaleidoscopic portrait of an artist that taps into the personal and political dimensions that inform the creation of art.”
– Beatrice Loayza, AV Club

“Stirring...a consummate dance film about art as witness, and its importance to culture and humanity… LeBlanc and Hurwitz beautifully weave together clips of the student performance, and their creative revelations about dancing [D-Man in the Waters]. The archival film of the premiere performance and the Jones/Zane revival in 2013 is masterfully edited, showing that this first dance piece by Bill T. Jones has lost none of its power to inspire.”
– Lewis Whittington, EDGE Media Network