Cancel Culture Comes For Ballet: Choreographer Lincoln Jones's Problematic Journey

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lincoln Jones is the director of the American Contemporary Ballet Company in Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 2011. Lincoln took an unusual path to dance and has an approach to performance and stage production that is worth discussing in its own right. But he came across Meghan's radar because of his unlikely involvement in the new free speech debates. In this conversation, Lincoln explains how that happened (spoiler alert: he didn't want to perfunctorily post a black square on his company's website in the summer of 2020) and talks about how even the ballet world has been affected by the censoriousness of the current moment. Most of all, though, he talks about dance. In a conversation unlike you've heard on The Unspeakable, Lincoln talks about what choreography means to him, especially the choreography and dance of Fred Astaire, and about how movement maps onto the human experience and translates to the stage.

In the bonus portion for paying subscribers at https://meghandaum.substack.com Lincoln shares his feelings about his age–47 years old–and talks about how awareness of his mortality is fueling his work. He offers his opinion about TikTok dances, Michael Jackson, and discloses how he really feels about the film LaLa Land.

Guest Bio:

Lincoln Jones is the director of the American Contemporary Ballet Company in Los Angeles. Learn more about the company at https://www.acbdances.com.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Unspeakable Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. Before I introduce the guest this week, just have a couple of announcements about stuff. The first is that this coming Saturday, March 18th, I will be in Newark, New Jersey, participating in a festival about Philip Roth,
0:23.2	about the novelist Philip Roth.
0:25.1	This is a festival called Philip Roth Unbound.
0:29.0	It's going to take place over that whole weekend.
0:31.9	And I am going to be moderating a panel, also participating in the panel. I'm the moderator, and I've got
0:39.2	big things to say, called What Gives You the Right? And it's about who's allowed to write about
0:45.3	what? We're going to talk about, in particular, the human stain, which is probably my favorite
0:51.5	Philip Roth novel, if not my favorite novel, period. Whether it would be
0:55.8	published today, if first time author would be able to publish a book like that today,
1:00.6	if Philip Roth were alive today, would he be able to publish that? It's going to be very cool.
1:05.3	So if you are in the tri-state area, come to Newark. You don't hear that every day and come check everything out. It's going to be
1:14.3	very cool. Okay. The second thing is Minneapolis. If you can't make it to Newark, maybe you want to come
1:20.3	to Minneapolis for the unspeak easy retreat that we're going to have in May. Like I said last week,
1:26.2	in addition to the overnight offering, May 8th through 11th, we're going to have in May. Like I said last week, in addition to the overnight offering,
1:29.1	May 8th through 11th, we're going to offer a day-only portion on May 9th and 10th. A lot of locals
1:37.2	have expressed interest in coming just for the day. So that is going to be available. It's filling
1:43.5	up quickly, especially the overnight portion,
1:45.3	but if you are interested in either offering, go to the unspeakeezy.com and get in touch with me.
1:52.1	Lots of big unspeak easy things coming up soon. So just get ready to hear more about that.
1:57.6	Okay. My guest, it's not the normal kind of guest this week. He's not a writer or an
2:03.5	academic or a substacker. He is a choreographer. Lincoln Jones is the director of the American
2:11.7	Contemporary Ballet Company, which he founded in 2011. Lincoln took an unusual path to dance, and he has a unique approach to
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.