Permission Granted: Bill T. Jones’ Radical Vulnerability and Reimagined Masculinity

Mark Broomfield

Masculinity in Free Fall

Masculinity in 2025 is in crisis—and has been for decades. We live in a moment when bell hooks apt description of an imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy is more emboldened than ever, and unapologetic about presenting a false choice between a culture in which you either dominate or be dominated.1 This world view, held by many men, has no space for “weak men,” who never show emotions and must always be in control.2 Refusing to grow with the times, and what our current sociopolitical and economic conditions require of men today—to change and adapt in a world that is fast outpacing “traditional masculinity.” White men’s solution for an increasingly changing world, in which they are the minority, is to insist on a masculine ideal prior to the civil rights era and (white) women’s right to vote in 1920. We are experiencing a backlash to Barack Obama’s 2008 ascendency to the president of United States, his reelection in 2012, and the Black advancement he represented. White masculinity fears a changing world in which women and LGBTQ people have made significant advances in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and what it portends for their future. In this world, where digital media, technology, and the information age continue to outpace their ideas of gender, many white men refuse to change.

I call on all men, and particularly white men in 2025, to do what bell hooks explores in her book The Will to Change (2004), which is to undo the harm of patriarchal masculinity.3 Undo the harm of what patriarchal masculinity does to boys and men, in telling them that they must always be in control, never ask for help, and never show emotions, except for anger and aggression.4 Undoing the harm is seeing the pain men are in and acknowledging a path out of it. And so I ask, how’s resisting change working out for you? More than ever, the rapid pace of societal change requires new ways of thinking about masculinity and reimagining how gender functions in men’s lives. In this essay, I argue for the importance of providing men a permission structure to access parts of their humanity that our culture devalues—femininity and women.5 Binaries such as male or female, masculine or feminine, gay or straight, Black or white simplify nuanced and complex ways to understand how gender functions today. We need a new language and bigger ideas of what an expansive masculinity looks like—and the necessary work required to adapt in a changing world. 

In the next section, I will analyze Bill T. Jones’ 1997 solo performance in the documentary Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers.6 Jones, along with his partner Arnie Zane, established their careers as one of the first “openly gay” dancers to unapologetically address issues of race, gender, and sexuality in their work of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In fact, no intersectional analysis of Western theatrical dance would be complete without an appreciation for and contextualization of Bill T. Jones, as one of the most important dance artists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Jones has paved the way for younger generations of dancers by redefining dance in ways that speak to examining the role of homophobia, racism, and sexism in a society and culture that prefers to avoid these controversial topics. Jones is a living embodiment of the ways in which Black gay/queer men in American contemporary dance wrestle with freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and sexual freedom to create a more expansive vision of masculinity and our shared humanity.7

Envisioning and Embodying New Masculinities 

The spectacle of the male dancing body in concert dance expresses, perhaps more vividly than in any other artistic form, the anxiety of American masculinity.8 With his masterful choreography, Bill T. Jones’ solo performance invites us to consider a masculinity that is both strong and vulnerable—in atypical ways for men. His performance offers an expansive vision of gendered performance, in which losing control is a strength, not a liability, and which contrasts the need for dominant masculinity to always be in control. 9A pathbreaking and iconic dancer-choreographer, Jones shows the power of Black queerness—if we listen and allow ourselves to imagine new ways of being and doing race, gender and sexuality.

Throughout his solo, and with incredible candor, Jones demonstrates strength and radical vulnerability, narrating stories about family, race, gender, sexuality, interracial relationships, HIV/AIDS, and life and death. He wrestles with his identity in public like few other dance performers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. 

In an approximately seven-minute dance, Jones leads us through a complex journey prompted by Bill Moyers who implores Jones to “walk a line through your story,” to which Jones responds, “Through a story—literally, walk in this space.” He stands up and proceeds to enter the large studio space. First, Jones walks in a circle while simultaneously talking in the third person about what it felt like to grow up as the tenth of twelve children. Jones describes the circle as tightly sealed by the “architecture of the family” that included his parents, and his sense of being surrounded and feeling safe in a Black community. Jones then walks along a diagonal, tangential path, describing this as being afraid to look forward, haunted by nightmares, and as a “sissy boy” afraid of his own shadow. Then, carving a curved line with both his arms and hips, Jones draws a circle describing his first encounter with white people. He retraces that circle, telling Moyers about the safeness he felt at home in contrast to the experiences that he encountered at school. For Jones, going to school served as a reminder of his desire to be home. At this point, Jones grapples with his identity and what it meant for him to be the son of a Black family raised in poverty, differentiating between the boy who speaks Black English at home from the Bill who attends a predominantly white school. Here Jones fundamentally raises the question, who is he? 

Following this identity crisis at such a young age, Jones then narrates experiences with his sexual and gender identities. The fast-paced steps from side to side in a straight line, suggesting extreme polar tensions experienced, as well as the disorienting effects of his circling around, come to a screeching halt. Next, he describes his first sexual encounters. “What does it mean to be a man?” he asks. “Does a man have children? And everything stops,” he recalls. As if undergoing a test or trial, Jones ducks his head and torso while stepping forward referring to his experience with women. “Everything stops.” Repeating the duck once more, he slows the stoop, bending lower as he steps forward with eyes closed. He states, “The man tries to be normal, everything stops.” Having paused, Jones jolts his body with a sideward jump. The jolt announces new clarity about his sexual identity that was brought upon meeting a Jewish homosexual in a club; the jolt signifies a lightning bolt of new energy, rebirth, re-energizing, something new, and a new direction.

Jones’s relationship with Arnie Zane raises new challenges for him as part of an interracial couple. The difficulty is shown by taking large, quick steps backward, forward, and to the side. He contrasts the rapid steps, by walking in a circle with his head inclined inwards, suggesting the tenderness shared between the couple. Taking another turn around a curve, Jones reveals that Arnie has AIDS and is dying. Walking slowly and gazing into the near distance, Jones acknowledges that he’s not leading his own life but following Arnie. He says, “Everything stops, the friend dies.” His eyes closed, Jones exhales walking in a circle. Directionless, he repeats the circle and asks, “Which way now?” 

Jones then speaks of starting all over again. Repeating the jolt observed earlier, Jones decides he must reinvent himself. He’s a “Black man alone.” Here Jones boldly steps forward, declaring that his choreography addresses the issues in his life. Next, in a series of walks punctuated by each narrated sentence, he tells of disclosing his HIV-positive status. At this point, he recognizes another change of identity in being HIV-positive. Now, he’s no longer Bill but an “HIV-positive, Black male homosexual.” Referring to himself in the third person, Jones boldly steps forward, followed by another step leaning backward. He repeats the phrase, but instead of leaning back a second time, he walks in a circle with his head inclined inwards. While doing so, he states, “The man steps with solid strong footsteps, but he is always a little bit scared. The man steps with solid strong footsteps, but he is always wishing that he were back somewhere more safe.” 

As the dance ends, Jones’s cadence changes, alternating between the pause of speaking and a moderate walk in a triplet form. Pauses that sound like metronomic beats punctuate his movement. His eyes look into the distance as the camera slowly follows him. He acknowledges that “his body is strong and he loves it,” followed by recognition of his newfound desirability and love, where “he can still pretend to be normal.” Now contemplative, Jones walks forward. Next, he twists the angle of his body and looks into the distance of a new direction, where he sees the end of his life. 

Radical Vulnerability as Strength

Jones’s radical vulnerability—understood as a disclosure of personal details about the male psyche or identity; the questioning of gender roles in a society where men are often reluctant to publicly reveal their inadequacies or failure to meet the masculine ideal—registers throughout his solo.10 And so when Jones asks, “What does it mean to be a man?” and “Does a man have children?” he raises questions about his gender and sexual identity, especially as a gay man. What it means to be a (straight) man, is different from what it means to be a gay man. Contemplating what being a man is in a world that excludes gay men from definitions of manhood and masculinity takes on deeper resonance and power. Jones’s performance asserts power in redefining vulnerability as strength, when it is often viewed as “feminine,” weak, and a threat to male identity.11

Jones questioning aloud “What does it mean to be a man?” unsettles the power and privilege of heterosexual Black masculinity—and reveals if it is solely about who you have sex with, then “I am a man.” His desire for normalcy exposes the pressures to conform to dominant masculinity that defines Black manhood within a heterosexual procreative status. And if that’s how men are defined, then Jones considers sexual experimentation with women. Jones’ admission served to satisfy society’s gendered expectations for men. Which begs the question: in what ways do we similarly see heterosexual men divulge their sexual experiences with other men in an exploration of their sexual identity? In his book New Black Man (2006), scholar Mark Anthony Neal addresses the lack of heterosexual Black male writers “willing to embrace the gray areas of Black masculinity,” that offer alternative models, in ways that gay men have contributed.12

With Bill T. Jones’ solo performance, men now have a model example and permission to explore and embody new relationships to an expansive masculinity needed today. His questioning of gender and sexuality further challenge stereotypes of masculinity, and provokes audiences to rethink the relationship of Blackness, masculinity and gay identity. Indeed, Jones’ confessional narrative, often observed as “weak,” underscores the power of his artistry to draw on the intimacy of experiential and embodied knowledge. In doing so, Jones makes the seemingly impossible, possible—deploying radical vulnerability as strength in an expansion of defining and redefining new Black masculinities for the future. Like many Black queer artists, who challenge boundaries, binaries, assumptions and social norms, Bill T. Jones distills a visionary future of what the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression, and sexual freedom means and looks like for the twenty-first century. In this moment, where men are in a free fall, searching for answers, and often from bad actors, it is incumbent on men to not only change, but to adapt and grow.

No one can stay hard forever without breaking at some point. Risk choosing radical vulnerability. Permission granted.

About the Author

Mark Broomfield, Associate Professor of English, Founder and Director of Performance as Social Change at SUNY Geneseo holds a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, is a London-born award-winning scholar, artist and performer of Jamaican heritage. His book Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight, is a groundbreaking exploration of black masculinity and sexual passing in American contemporary dance. Watch for Broomfield’s soon to be released Danced Out documentary. www.markbroomfield.org

References

  1. bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (Washington Square Press, 2004), 29.
    ↩︎
  2.  Victor Seidler, “Masculinities, Bodies and Emotional Life,” Men and Masculinities 10, no. 1 (2007): 13. 
    ↩︎
  3. hooks, The Will to Change, 31. ↩︎
  4. Zachary Gerdes, Man Kind: Tools for Mental Health, Well-Being, and Modernizing Masculinity (John Hopkins University Press, 2022), 2.
    ↩︎
  5. Richard V Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It (Swift Press, 2022), 151.
    ↩︎
  6.  Bill T. Jones: Still/Here, archived January 17, 1997, at https://billmoyers.com/content/bill-t-jones-still-here-with-bill-moyers/.
    ↩︎
  7. Mark Broomfield, Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight (Routledge, 2024), 8.
    ↩︎
  8.  Broomfield, Black Queer Dance, 9. ↩︎
  9.  Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2006), 51. ↩︎
  10. Gerdes, Man Kind, 6. ↩︎
  11. Seidler, “Bodies and Emotional Life,” 15.
    ↩︎
  12. Neal, Mark Anthony, New Black Man (Routledge, 2006), 28.
    ↩︎