'Fondly' explores Lincoln's great legacy - Times Union

Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company production of "Fondly Do We Hope ... The piece was performed July 28 at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company production of "Fondly Do We Hope ... The piece was performed July 28 at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Fervently Do We Pray," which his company performed Wednesday evening at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, a detailed listing of body parts recurs again and again. "Fondly Do We Hope," made in commemoration of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, is loaded, in both senses of the word. a sound design that includes the ear piercing whistle of Lincoln's funeral train; As a means of shedding light on the nature of story and of history, he tells us of five lives, including those of Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and Jones himself; At one point, the dancers lift a seated Lincoln (Paul Matteson) aloft, recreating the structure of his future memorial. The characters are archetypes: the heroic president, Mary Todd (Asli Bulbul) embracing her husband tenderly and later in mourning in her hoop skirt and widow's weeds, Shayla-Vie Jenkins as an embodiment of feminine beauty and purity, and the evil slave owner (Peter Chamberlin) who assaults her. "Lincoln is a story we tell ourselves," Dobson says in a too-neat wrap-up in the final moments. It's a story that must be told and retold, in the hopes that eventually we will obey the edict Lincoln put forth in his 1861 inaugural address: "We must not be enemies."