Rosalynde LeBlanc directed, produced, and starred in “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” (2021), a brilliant, personal documentary. LeBlanc decided to become a dancer at sixteen years old after seeing D-Man in the Waters, Jones’ first solo work, then performed it as a former company member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. As an Associate Professor & Chair of Dance at Loyola Marymount University, she teaches this dance to the students, and as a filmmaker, she is teaching this dance to her viewers. LeBlanc is trying to convey to laymen and inexperienced dancers how a dance can be emblematic of a certain time, representative of a community and act as a spiritual shield against physical death, grief, and loss. She is inviting us to enter this piece which she has devoted her life to and use it to find our equivalent universal story of struggle and survival.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” serves multiple purposes. The documentary memorializes the dance’s roots by describing the era, the location, the original troupe, and the dance’s inspiration: the eighties AIDS crisis decimating the New York dance troupe, including founder Arnie Zane and D-Man, the nickname for dancer Demian Acquavella. LeBlanc uses archival footage of their rehearsals and performances, stock footage and still photographs of gay life in Manhattan, newspaper clippings and excerpts from television news on how media covered AIDS, montages of black and white photographs, including some that Zane took, and interviews with surviving original members of the troupe reflecting on that time recorded for this documentary. The dance becomes a “response to the plague” and a solid indication that they did survive and find joy amidst the pain. The titular dance exists in the shadow of death.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” also captures how LeBlanc teaches people unfamiliar with these origins or even dance how to perform the dance, which is not just a matter of learning the steps but learning the history of that time and mining the dancers’ personal life to discover the parallels in their own life. Many of the students’ recorded responses indicate that they are unfamiliar with AIDS, are not as united a community as the original troupe and have a superficial understanding of themselves and each other. Her pupils act as audience surrogates as they grasp around trying to rise to Leblanc’s challenge to discover connection with each other and the audience. They must ask what tragedy everyone shares today.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” was recorded before the pandemic so the students reveal that there is nothing that unites them other than proximity. I did not notice that a couple of people had the most frequent appearances throughout the course of the documentary until after repeat viewings. I noticed that a flag advertising the dance program had a black woman student on it, and there were black women students in one of two groups of students, but they never got any lines. If the documentary has a flaw, it is LeBlanc’s tendency to focus on the same handful of students and leaning heavily on their sheltered, narrow worldview so she can use their ignorance as an excuse to effectively teach them that they are connected and affect each other so they should care about each other. I did not think that LeBlanc needed a rationale. Maybe the students given the most airtime are representative of the entire class, but it is a large class so it becomes obvious when the same person speaks more than once.
Other students get more time devoted to their biography, and one woman gets close to a solid answer: gun violence. LeBlanc has everyone hold hands then one person at a time lower themselves to the ground which causes everyone to move in response in that direction. While they come to the class believing that campus rape and Black Lives Matter may not affect the other person, this physical movement proves that it does because they are connected. Later the simple act of looking at another person just using her eyes versus turning her entire face to look at that person evokes a huge emotional response. “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” is a layman’s lesson in why dance carries universal importance and how movement symbolizes experience and is imbued with emotion.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” also is about how an iconic creative piece gets transmitted through time by people further removed from the original creators and how that piece retains its original form through subsequent interpretations. LeBlanc was not part of the original troupe, but Jones considers her an expert and part of his inner circle. LeBlanc appoints herself as a dance archivist and historian who is trying to preserve the dance and its meaning, which Jones honors. LeBlanc’s documentary does not omit the moments when he corrects her interpretation while saving her face by repeatedly confessing that his memory could be off. She retains her moments of discomfort and nervousness in the face of her idol even though she is a grown woman with a different employer. She makes casting decisions based on her knowledge of students’ dance experience, but Jones comes in, tweaks her choices, and corrects her movement instruction. She defers. If LeBlanc can get it wrong, and she learned from the source, then how will this dance retain its original form in the future? This documentary is a preservation tool.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” is punctuated with excerpts of professional dancers executing D-Man in the Waters for the documentary as a touchstone for viewers to have an idea of how the dance should appear. With a refreshing lack of vanity, a member of the original troupe accurately guesses that subsequent dancers in her role probably did better, and LeBlanc juxtaposes the original footage with today’s execution. It also helps the viewers understand how far the students must go.
So how do you define the “it” in “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters?” Leblanc uses Jones’ various answers to this question: secular and religious. The secular definition of “it” is the ability to move yourself, your fellow dancers, and the audiences into elation, “biologically predisposed to hopefulness.” The religious definition of “it” is “spirit,” “great mystery of the universe,” or “bring the God into the room.” If every generation is decimated by war or plague, then it emerges from it with the aid of great art reminding us of the great elation and beauty discovered in the struggle.
“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” feels very prophetic because we are experiencing a literal plague and overlapping dystopian nightmares attacking every community. Art creating unity and community is the kind of hopeful message that documentaries rarely provide. Seeing this film in the right frame of mind will help you transcend the weight of your temporal existence and transform into a universal human triumph in the face of certain oblivion.
