When the name Abraham Lincoln is mentioned, several things immediately come to mind. We think of the tall, black stovepipe hat adding another seven inches to his already elevated frame. We think “Honest Abe,” the nickname Lincoln earned as a result of his sincere and scrupulous nature. We think of the guy with the scraggly beard, the eloquent rhetorician, the Great Emancipator, the courageous man who led us through the Civil War — perhaps the most pivotal event in United States history.

Bill T. Jones tells us to stop thinking and start imagining.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will be presenting its acclaimed work, “Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray,” during the University of Michigan's 24th Annual MLK Symposium tomorrow. Directed by acclaimed choreographer and 2007 Tony Award-winner Bill T. Jones, the engaging dance theater performance centers on our 16th president.

“Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray” transports us to a moment in time when there was much unrest and uncertainty in the United States. Through the use of dance, text, recitations, projections and music ranging from folk to gospel, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company aims to create a multimedia performance that captures the turmoil and emotion of Lincoln’s era.

In particular, dance is utilized frequently and effectively throughout the piece, transforming the performance into much more than a typical musical theater routine.

Professor Robin Wilson, an Associate Professor of Dance in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, explained why dance may be especially effective in this performance, while giving a dance primer to students who are not familiar with the art form.

“I try to use poetry as a reference or analogy for people trying to understand modern dance. When you hear poetry, reading it doesn’t really do it. You have to hear it. And it’s not linear. It triggers images … for an overall feel that affects you,” Wilson said. “And I think modern dance choreography, and dance choreography in general, tends to do that. It’s usually not a narrative as in a play or musical theater, where you would have a dance number that kind of carries the story along just like a song would.

“It really is this idea of putting the moving body in relation to other bodies and maybe film to evoke an image and provoke thought,” he added.

Wilson also applauds Bill T. Jones for taking a distinctive approach to choreographing the dance numbers in “Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray.”

“(Jones) has a process where he collaborates heavily with his dancers,” Wilson said. “Rather than saying ‘Okay, these are the steps; I’ve made them up before; I want you to learn the steps, and then I want you to execute the steps the way I want it; and here’s the music; and here’s the costumes,’ it’s much more collaborative, where he walks in and he asks questions. And then out of those answers, movement questions are presented. And when those movement questions are posed, the dancers then create movement answers. Out of those movement answers, he then, with that material, creates a piece.”

Starting with the title, Jones aims to portray Lincoln in a manner that extends beyond the historical figure, and focuses instead on the man behind the history.

“Lincoln is a story we tell each other. A generation or two ago, schoolchildren would have learned the Gettysburg Address, the second inaugural of which the ‘Fondly’ reference comes,” Jones explains in a video on his dance company’s website.

“I was gently mocking what was true about Lincoln being a series of lines, a series of speeches, a series of biographical points. I was using ‘Fondly’ in a warm but somewhat ironic way to talk about Lincoln being reduced to a few simple tropes,” Jones says in the video.

The title may hold ulterior meanings as well. University Musical Society Student Advisory Committee member Sayan Bhattachary offers a different take on the title.