As Serenade/The Proposition opens, six young women and men walk out onto the stage in business attire talking about what is meaningful in their lives: the self-centeredness of our country, love, racism, history and activism in ways that are very personal to each of them. Their voices are sometimes individual, sometimes blended, and sometimes overpower each other. Dancers then enter in contemporary dress, but re-enter in the next scene in period clothing and take us through a thought-provoking interpretation of history and its effects on us today.
Serenade/The Proposition is another example of one of the USF Theater and Dance Department’s hugely successful collaboration projects. Originally created by MacArthur "genius grant" winner Bill T. Jones in honor of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it has layers of acting/spoken word, dance, music, song and multimedia. Portions of the dialogue and choreography were workshopped with USF students and the New York-based Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, creating a unique variation of the show. Other dialog was taken from Lincoln’s speeches, additional works from that time period, and impressions from Jones’ family trip to Richmond in 1955.
The dancers are masterful,
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2010.