Student dancers to perform Bill T. Jones’ ‘D-Man in the Waters’

After months of creative collaboration and practice, members of the Yale Dance Theater (YDT) will perform a re-staging of “D-Man in the Waters” — a seminal work by choreographer Bill T. Jones.

The performance will take place on Saturday, April 20 at 1 p.m. at the Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School Theater, 177 College St. While the event is open to the public for free, reservations are recommended. Reservations can be made at Eventbrite.

Student members of the Yale Dance Theater began working with current and former members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company at the start of this semester on “D-Man in the Waters,” which Jones choreographed in 1989 at the height of the AIDS crisis. The work is set to Felix Mendelssohn’s “Octet in E Flat Major.”

YDT is a faculty-led extracurricular initiative that enables Yale students to work with professional artists on the reconstruction of existing choreography and/or development of new work. YDT is conceived as a practice-based research initiative that allows students to investigate choreographic ideas and their historical context through a rigorous, semester-long rehearsal process, resulting in a final public performance. As part of the research, students regularly post blog entries about their experience.

The project is led by Emily Coates, director of the dance studies curriculum in Theater Studies and associate professor (adjunct) of theater studies and directing at the Yale School of Drama. Two former members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company — Catherine Cabeen and Germaul Barnes — are co-leading the project. The student directors for “D-Man in the Waters” are Yale College students Madelyn Blaney ’21 and Elayna Garner ’20, and Ph.D. candidate Mariel Pettee ’21 (physics). Other dancers in the YDT ensemble are undergraduates Liam Appelson ’19, Rachel Chew ’20, Carrie Dean ’22, Caroleine James ’22, Constance Thurmond ’19, Kathleen Voight ’19, Clare Wu ’21, and Anna Zheng ’21; graduate students Kyla Arsadjaja ’20 (School of Art), April Bailey ’20 Ph.D. (psychology), Matthew Blake ’20 (Divinity School), Aleca Borsuk ’19 (School of Forestry & Environmental Studies), and Kyra Prats 22 (School of Forestry & Environmental Studies); and postgraduate student Gabriela Drucker.

For more information, visit the YDT website.