Jones: race a factor in Croce's 'New Yorker' 'Victim Art' article - choreographer Bill T. Jones; critic Arlene Croce - Presstime News

Dance Magazine, Feb, 1996 by Caitlin Sims

New York City- The debate over "victim art" reached a new level when choreographer Bill T. Jones, in a public event at the 92nd Street Y, suggested critic Arlene Croce's attack on his work may have been fueled by racial ignorance and also said that Jews control the New York media.

Croce wrote in the New Yorker last winter that she would not see Jones's Still/Here because it was an expression of "victim art," which she considered impossible to review.

Croce wrote that Jones's work was "a messianic traveling medicine show," a remark Jones referred to at the Y. "Does she know what the black church means in terms of the philosophical life? Would she say that some Jewish choreographer is Talmudic?" he asked. "No, she probably wouldn't." Expanding his judgment to include the entire New York media, Jones added, "Quite frankly the people controlling the media are Jewish. So they understand [the work of Jewish artists]." Croce is not Jewish.

The comments came at a wide-ranging public conversation with Dance Magazine contributing editor and Village Voice critic Deborah Jowitt, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. Jones also discussed his work, his autobiography, and his roots. The 92nd Street Y is a Jewish organization.

Jones said of Croce: "People like her are still secretly waiting for this liberal weakness to pass, when we see that not all cultures are equal, and this is a weakness on the part of the funding agencies that has let in a person like this one, [who is] inferior."

Croce, asked later about Jones's remarks, said, "He is still playing the role of a victim, despite all of his success .... I really can't give any credence to this as an argument."

In his remarks about Jews and the media, Jones may have been testing the boundaries, which he does in his work. He recounted a solo in the Hamptons on Long Island: "There were two children - I had met their father. And the father was there....I stopped and I just pulled my pants down. I didn't grind my hips or anything. I looked at [the father]. I looked at the children. ...And I saw me from a distance standing there completely naked in front of them....I pulled my pants up, and continued going.... It was not meant to hurt anyone. It was saying, `Can we dare do this?'"

Jones regretted having risked hurting the children. "I...thought we could break a rule....I understand why that rule exists but I think that it is a shabby rule. Because in art we could break that rule about my nakedness and those children. I didn't ask permission to do it, that's what I did wrong."

Jones's future projects include a piece to a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his poetry and a collaboration with Bernice Johnson-Reagon, a founder of the music group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Jones spoke at the 92nd Street Y's Breaking Ground Series, one of numerous events celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Y's Harkness Dance Center.