Accustomed to being challenged, provoked and even shocked by the American choreographer Bill T. Jones, dance lovers here seemed unprepared for the respectful sobriety of his latest creation, an homage to Lyons's own Lumiere brothers on the 100th anniversary of their invention of modern cinema. Not that the 80-minute work, "24 Frames per Second," lacked sensuality as Auguste and Louis Lumiere danced a steamy tango together, or the soundtrack boomed out rhythmic breathing that ended in a sexual climax, or a near-naked woman wearing a white falcon's head symbolized flights of cinematic imagination.
It was just that this year's Lumiere anniversary -- the brothers' first 50-second movie was shot outside their family's factory here on March 19, 1895 -- is a major event for Lyons and, as resident choreographer at the Lyons Opera Ballet, Mr. Jones clearly felt that this occasion was more suited to poetic narrative than emotional agitation or political controversy.
True, the audience responded warmly to the piece at the Lyons Opera on Friday, when it began a nine-performance run that ends on Sunday. But there was none of the cheering or foot-stamping that followed the world premiere of Mr. Jones's own company's work, "Still/ Here," in Lyons last fall. Even his French admirers, it seems, now expect to be disturbed.
Le Monde's dance critic, Dominique Fretard, was struck by the contrast with "Still/Here," the much-discussed work that Mr. Jones, who is himself H.I.V.-positive, based on his so-called Survival Workshops with people suffering from terminal illnesses. "With this piece, Bill T. Jones offers a beautiful escape, a bit like Alice in Wonderland," she wrote. "It's a child's dream . . . It's desire."
Mr. Jones has welcomed the respite. "After all the brouhaha of 'Still/ Here,' I wanted to go back to the studio, to dance more, to feel my own muscles again," he said in an interview. He does not dance in "24 Frames per Second," which he created for the Lyons Opera Ballet. But, he noted, "every phrase you see, other than the tango and the waltzes, are phrases I made on my body." Through dance, then, he tells the story of cinema, albeit impressionistically. He said the initial idea of showing the passage from silent movies to talkies and from black-and-white to color proved too complicated. So instead, eager to use two particular dancers, the American Eric Geiger and the Italian Edmond Russo, Mr. Jones focused on the Lumiere brothers themselves.
When the curtain rises, the two young men in turn-of-the-century formal attire have just found a metal tube. They inspect it and discover it contains a light, which picks out pieces of machinery scattered across the stage and then falls on a bare-chested woman representing a bird. The machinery takes on the form of a projector, the bird begins to move and cinema is born.
From this quiet beginning, the work moves quickly to the dances and songs popular in Lyons around 1895. And with strobe lights creating the staccato movements of early movies, the 23 dancers re-enact two of the Lumiere brothers' first films, one of workers leaving the family's factory, the other of a train arriving at La Ciotat station.
Continuity is provided by the brothers and the bird (danced by an American, Julie Bacon, who recently moved here from the Boston Ballet), but Mr. Jones's history of cinema travels from waltzes to the tango, from the screams of 1930's horror movies to the cheerful big-band era of the 1950's. And to suggest today's X-rated movies, while some dancers peer at a screen offstage, others dance to the sound of heavy breathing.
For the third and final section of the piece, though, Mr. Jones wanted to spotlight the world of dance. "We threw out the idea of costumes trying to look 1995 and the dancers wear the clothes they dance in every day," he said over tea in the patio of a hotel in the old section of Lyons. "If my piece is about anything, it is about my commitment to live theater, to flesh and bones and the sweating person." It was, in fact, the choice he first made when he was studying film at the State University at Binghamton, N.Y., almost 25 years ago. "Everyone wanted to become an independent film maker," the 43-year-old choreographer recalled, "but I chose dance. Something direct, engaging, poetic. My muscles understood it, my mind and heart followed."
When he looks at today's movies, he does not regret his decision. "How did we get from that innocence of the early years of cinema to almost any film today that has the most shocking acts of violence and sexuality mixed together?" he wondered aloud. "There was a human scale to their aspirations. And I look at us now. How did we get from there to here?"
Still, Mr. Jones ends "24 Frames per Second" on an optimistic note. A large movie projector appears, the "bird" takes her place before it and then a screen leaves the Lumiere brothers standing alone at the front of the stage, watching a silhouette of the dancing "bird." Finally, her place is taken by the image of a white dove flying silently across the screen.
Mr. Jones clearly enjoys working with the Lyons Opera Ballet, which will be performing later this month in Berkeley, Calif., at festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter. He created "Love Defined" for the 30-member company before he became its resident choreographer in January 1994. He has since created "I Want to Cross Over" as well as "24 Frames per Second," and his initial two-year contract has been extended through 1997.
Working with Lyons's classically trained dancers, though, has tested him in new ways. "I am constantly translating very personal and cultural experiences to people who are willing, but don't have any way of understanding," he said. "My vocabulary, all these wiggles and isolations that I do and always have done, they're ours."
""I tell them, 'I want you to release your hip,' " he went on. " 'No, don't roll your hip. It's not jazz. We're using a hip movement. Release it.' " He sighed at the problems of getting his message over: "This is a big organization. You can't get fired. I can't just say, do this. Last year, I heard they were afraid of me because I would explode in a nondirected way. I don't do that now and that's good for me."
Yorgos Loukos, the dance director at the Lyons Opera Ballet, said the dancers have also had to adjust. "Technically, I would say they haven't changed that much," he said, "but from a human point of view they have made great progress with Bill. He challenges them from a moral point of view because he wants everyone to know at every stage of his life that he is a militant gay man."
Still, as he prepared to resume work with his own dancers, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Mr. Jones said he felt rewarded by the reception that Lyons continues to give his works. "People go to the theater here with great expectations and gusto and enthusiasm," he said. "My own company has found great popular support here. Maybe it's the kind of politically based work I have been doing. I'm amazed by people's openness."
New York Times, June 8, 1995, Section C, Page 13 of the National edition with the headline: The Annals of Film, As Told in Dance