Critics are raving about the documentary film “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters” directed by dance professor and chair Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, and featuring performances by LMU Dance students. LeBlanc Loo co-directed the film with Tom Hurwitz, ASC.
The film premieres in Los Angeles on Friday 7/23 at select Laemmle Theatres, is currently playing in New York City, and is also available virtually. Loo will do live post show Q&As on July 24 at the Laemmle Royal in Santa Monica and July 25 at the Laemmle Pasadena. Get Tickets: bit.ly/dmanmovie
It was selected as New York Times Critics Pick, and is described in the review as “A striking new documentary explor[ing] the enduring legacy of a dance piece created by Bill T. Jones at the height of the AIDS crisis.” Scholar, historian and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates, Jr. said of the film “[It] goes to the very heart of the vital role art plays in our society during times of social crisis”
Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters brings to life the creative process that culminated in choreographer-dancer-director Bill T. Jones’s tour de force ballet D-Man in the Waters, one of the most important works of art to come out of the AIDS crisis. In 1989, D-Man in the Waters gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that the emerging Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (both partners at the time) felt as they were embattled by the AIDS epidemic.
As a group of young LMU dancers in the present re-interpret the work, they deepen their understanding of its power – exploring what is at stake in their own personal lives in order to commit and perform it successfully. Through an extraordinary collage of interviews, archival material, and uniquely powerful cinematography, this lyrical documentary uses the story of this iconic dance to illustrate the power of art and the triumph of the human spirit.