Photos: Paul B. Goode
A Rite
NEW PROJECT! Premiering in January 2013
A dance-theater collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company.
Story/Time
Bill T. Jones returns to the stage in a critically acclaimed new work
of storytelling and dance.
Play and Play: An Evening of
Movement and Music
152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor
Carnegie Hall Tower
New York, NY 10019
Phone 212-994-3500
Fax 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
www.youtube.com/imgartists
“Take something and do something to it, and then do something
else to it.” – Jasper Johns
Duet Programs
Body Against Body and Between Us.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
2013–2014 Season
Now in its 30th year, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was born out of an 11year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they
redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary
that would change the face of American dance. The Company has performed worldwide in over
200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent and is recognized as one of the most
innovative and powerful forces in the dance-theater world. Touring projects for the 2013-2014
season include major new work, repertory classics, minimal duets and Bill T. Jones’s return
to the stage.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.691.6500
f: 212.633.1974
[email protected]
newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
A Rite
US Representation
IMG Artists
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
t: 212.994.3500
f: 212.994.3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
NEW PROJECT! Premiering in January 2013
This work brings together two leading American directors and their companies. A Rite is an intriguing and
powerful collaboration between artists Bill T. Jones and Anne Bogart and their respective companies – Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company. Coinciding with the one-hundredth anniversary of the
premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Jones and Bogart combine forces to explore the impact of this
revolutionary piece of music, imagining the consequence of hearing the score played for the very first time.
Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Story/Time
“Modern yet wry, gorgeously danced and at times discordant...a dance-theater roller coaster with surprises
around every corner.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Director and choreographer Bill T. Jones – whose major honors include a MacArthur “Genius” Award, the
Kennedy Center Honors and two Tony Awards for Best Choreography – returns to the stage at the center of a
new work for his renowned company. Inspired by legendary artist and composer John Cage’s Indeterminacy,
a performance of ninety one-minute stories interrupted by a chance musical score, Jones creates a collage of
dance, music, and seventy of his own short stories, arranged anew for each performance by chance procedure.
Original music composed by Ted Coffey will accompanies the diverse company of dancers.
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
t: +44 20 7622 8549
f: +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
Co-commissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State (NJ) and the Walker Art Center.
Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music
“Rarely has one seen a dance company throw itself onto the stage with such kinetic exaltation.”
– The New York Times
The Company’s classical music-focused program includes D-Man in the Waters (1989), Bill T. Jones’s joyful tour
de force and a genuine modern dance classic, set to Mendelssohn’s Octet in E Flat Major Opus 20, this renowned
work showcases the virtuosic company in a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit. Other works
include pieces to Mozart, Schubert and Ravel. Requires local string musicians.
Reconstruction support for D-Man in the Waters provided by the American Dance Festival.
Duet Programs
Body Against Body and Between Us
“Bill T. Jones unadorned is a revelation.” – The Boston Globe
Body Against Body returns to Bill T. Jones’s roots in the avant-garde with a program that revives and reconsiders
the challenging, groundbreaking works that launched Jones and the late Arnie Zane, his partner and collaborator
of 17 years. Still some of the most significant examples of the postmodern aesthetic, these pieces redefined
the duet form and changed the face of American dance. Between Us is a program of powerful duets that paint
and intriguing portrait of the bond between two people, reflecting the humanity and effort implicit in the most
complex of relationships – the partnership.
Body Against Body was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
Photos: Paul B. Goode
Duet Programs
Body Against Body and Between Us
“The combination of brisk formality and a deeply
sensual attack... was riveting decades ago and it’s
riveting today.” – New York Magazine
152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor
Carnegie Hall Tower
New York, NY 10019
Phone 212-994-3500
Fax 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
www.youtube.com/imgartists
Duet Programs
“Bill T. Jones unadorned is a revelation.” The Boston Globe
Body Against Body and Between Us are intimate and focused collections of duet works drawn
from the Company’s 30 year history. Body Against Body returns to Bill T. Jones’s roots in the
avant-garde with a program that revives and reconsiders the challenging, groundbreaking works
that launched Jones and the late Arnie Zane, his partner and collaborator of 17 years. Still
some of the most significant examples of the postmodern aesthetic, these pieces redefined the
duet form and changed the face of American dance. Both conceptually and physically rigorous,
the works take on new life through the diverse dancers of Jones’s company, providing a rare
look at the origins of a widely acclaimed choreographer. Between Us is a program of powerful
duets that paint an intriguing portrait of the bond between two people, reflecting the humanity
and effort implicit in the most complex of relationships – the partnership.
Programs include 2-3 works from the Company’s repertory:
Blauvelt Mountain (A Fiction) (1980, reconstructed 2002)
One of the first duets that Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane created together, Blauvelt Mountain capitalizes on the
disparities and specificities between distinct body types, often placing one person in a position of dependency.
Eccentric and occasionally humorous tableaux, casual conversations, and word associations are paired with
rigorous partnering sequences to suggest the mental and emotional engagement, heightened awareness,
and intimacy necessary for successful partnering.
Continuous Replay (1977, revised by Bill T. Jones 1991)
Continuous Replay is a work that traces Arnie Zane’s interests in photography and film. Originally choreographed
by Zane in 1977 as a solo titled Hand Dance and later revised as a group work by Bill T. Jones in 1991, Continuous
Replay is based on 45 precise gestures accumulated in space and time, cunningly complicated by discrete
movement and an improvisational score. Contains nudity.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.691.6500
f: 212.633.1974
[email protected]
newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
US Representation
IMG Artists
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
t: 212.994.3500
f: 212.994.3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
t: +44 20 7622 8549
f: +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
Duet x 2 (1982, reconstructed 2003)
The virtuosity of Duet x 2 is rooted in conventional modern dance vocabulary and marked by demanding
athletics, surprising shapes and changing relationships. The work underlines the power and emotion that is
experienced when two male bodies walk, stand, support and crash through space at full throttle.
Monkey Run Road (1979, reconstructed 2011)
The earliest of the Body Against Body duets, Monkey Run Road reveals the early dance-making concerns of Bill
T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Traces of the duo’s background in jiu-jitsu, social dancing, photography, and contact
improvisation are readily seen in the piece, where repetitive, athletic phrases are punctuated by minimalist tasks
and fragments of dialogue.
Valley Cottage: A Study (1980/1981, reconstructed 2011)
A new reconstruction for 2011, Valley Cottage is a duet that has not been seen since its original performances in
the early ‘80s. The reconstruction draws upon the personalities and relationships of the company’s dancers in
place of the original spoken text by Jones and Zane.
Duet (1995/2002)
For two dancers in perfect unison, this piece’s coolly sophisticated movement reflects Jones’s work with
Trisha Brown. The precise and challenging choreography is accompanied by John Oswald’s frenetic 1975
“plunderphonic” track Power, combining rock guitars with the exhortations of an evangelist preacher. The final
section is set to Daniel Bernard Roumain’s imagined conversation between titans of the mid-twentieth century
avant-garde and an aged African-American mother of twelve.
Body Against Body was commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
Photos: Paul B. Goode
Play and Play: An Evening of
Movement and Music
“No other dancer-choreographer working
today allows past, present, and future to
mingle so freely in his body.” – Vanity Fair
152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor
Carnegie Hall Tower
New York, NY 10019
Phone 212-994-3500
Fax 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
www.youtube.com/imgartists
“Take something and do something to it, and then
do something else to it.” – Jasper Johns
Play and Play:
An Evening of Movement and Music
“Rarely has one seen a dance company throw itself onto the stage with such
kinetic exaltation.” – The New York Times
Performed with live musicians,* Play and Play: An evening of movement and music applies
Jones’s inventive choreography to some of the most important Western musical works of our
time. Featuring compositions by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Ravel or Schubert this
program highlights the joy of musicians and dancers working together.
Programs include 2-3 works from the Company’s repertory:
D-Man in the Waters (1989, revised 1998)
“In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.”- Jenny Holzer
Bill T Jones’s joyful tour-de-force, D-Man in the Waters, is a true classic of modern dance and a New York Dance
and Performance (“Bessie”) Award-winning work. It is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit
that guides audiences through loss, hope and triumph. Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op.
20 the work is one of the finest examples of the post-modern aesthetic and was featured in PBS’s landmark film
Dancing in the Light – Six Dances by African-American Choreographers.
Spent Days Out Yonder (2000)
Spent Days Out Yonder is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, set to the second movement
of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The movement is firmly rooted in Mr. Jones’s elegant, weighted
movement vocabulary, challenging dancers to move with ease, efficiency and physical honesty through the
sublime score.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.691.6500
f: 212.633.1974
[email protected]
newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
US Representation
IMG Artists
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
t: 212.994.3500
f: 212.994.3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
t: +44 20 7622 8549
f: +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
Continuous Replay (1977, revised 1991)
Continuous Replay reflects Arnie Zane’s interests in photography and film. Originally choreographed by Zane
in 1977 as a solo titled Hand Dance and later revised as a group work by Bill T. Jones in 1991, Continuous Replay
is based on 45 precise gestures accumulated in space and time, cunningly complicated by discrete movement
events. A newly commissioned score for string octet by Jerome Begin combines motifs from Beethoven’s first
and last string quartets with recorded sounds to create a surprising soundscape. Contains nudity.
Ravel: Landscape or Portrait? (2012)
This new work responds to Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major (1903), reflecting the wistful and
melancholic sentiment of the score as well as its precision and restraint. Similar to the music’s complicated
internal logic, one of two choreographic variations for the third movement (either landscape or portrait) is
selected by chance procedure before each performance.
Story (2013)
Story and Ravel: Landscape or Portrait are Jones’s first new repertory works in over a decade. In this piece,
Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor (Death and the Maiden) is the basis for an energetic new work
that draws from the company’s latest choreographic methods developed for 2012’s Story/Time.
Reconstruction support for D-Man in the Waters provided by the American Dance Festival.
* Requires local string musicians at each engagement
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
Photos: Anne Bogart by Craig Schwartz and Bill T. Jones by Stephanie Berger
A Rite
NEW PROJECT! Premiering in January 2013
152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor
Carnegie Hall Tower
New York, NY 10019
Phone 212-994-3500
Fax 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
www.youtube.com/imgartists
Award winning directors Bill T. Jones and Anne Bogart
collaborate to create a major new dance-theater work
coinciding with the 100th Anniversary of the premiere
of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
A Rite (2013)
“…one of the most prominent and provocative American choreographers of
his generation…” – The N ew York Times (on Bill T. Jones)
“…controversial and visionary, (and) obviously not afraid of challenges.”
– The N ew York Times (on Anne Bogart)
For its thirtieth anniversary, the Company will create a major new dance-theater work bringing together two
leading American directors and their companies. A Rite is an intriguing and powerful collaboration between
artists Bill T. Jones and Anne Bogart and their respective companies – Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
and SITI Company. Coinciding with the one-hundredth anniversary of the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite
of Spring, Jones and Bogart combine forces to explore the impact of this revolutionary piece of music, imagining
the consequence of hearing the score played for the very first time.
Artists’ statement:
Our intention is to create a meditation upon the phenomenon of the encounter with Igor Stravinsky’s music and
with the history that the piece carries upon its back. We are taking the work apart and putting it back together
again in a way that we both hope will speak to audiences everywhere. The music is prime and the socialhistorical context is a point of departure as is the community created by the joining of our two companies. We
both believe that the work allows us the opportunity to reflect upon the human condition: sacrifice; creative
and spiritual rebirth; the individual against or with the community. Much of the spoken text will be by Jonah
Lehrer from his chapter on Stravinsky in his bestselling book Proust Was a Neuroscientist. The result will not
be a re-construction of the performance and subsequent riot at the infamous Parisian premiere, but rather a
deconstruction of the music and its impact upon the development of the human mind.
– Anne Bogart & Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.691.6500
f: 212.633.1974
[email protected]
newyorklivearts.org /#/BTJAZDC
US Representation
IMG Artists
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
t: 212.994.3500
f: 212.994.3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
t: +44 20 7622 8549
f: +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
World Premiere in January 2013 at Carolina Performing Arts, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
Photos: Paul B. Goode (left), Gene Pittman (right)
Story/Time (2012)
“Modern yet wry, gorgeously danced and
at times discordant...a dance-theater roller
coaster with surprises around every corner.”
– San Francisco Chronicle
152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor
Carnegie Hall Tower
New York, NY 10019
Phone 212-994-3500
Fax 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
www.youtube.com/imgartists
Director and choreographer Bill T. Jones returns
to the stage in a critically acclaimed new work of
storytelling and dance.
Story/Time (2012)
“These memories…are poignant, hilarious and sometimes terrifying.”
–The Star-Ledger
“All his endeavors…go back to the questions about love, history and
identity.” – The New York Times
Director and choreographer Bill T. Jones – whose major honors include a MacArthur “Genius” Award, the
Kennedy Center Honors and two Tony Awards for Best Choreography – returns to the stage at the center of
an acclaimed new work for his renowned company. Inspired by legendary artist and composer John Cage’s
Indeterminacy, a performance of ninety one-minute stories interrupted by a chance musical score, Jones creates
a collage of dance, music, and seventy of his own short stories, arranged anew for each performance by chance
procedure.
In Story/Time, Jones fuses the age-old art of storytelling with a vibrant landscape of contemporary movement
and music. Similar to a busy streetscape or a crowded room, the experience challenges audience members to
find meaning and connection in the sweep of randomized, disparate elements. Jones’ short stories are drawn
from his own life and tales handed down through the generations of his family. In layering a traditional form
against the avant-garde compositional concerns of the mid-century modernists, the tension between high and
low art is called in to question.
In his first project with the Company, composer, musician, and intermedia artist Ted Coffey, Ph.D. composes and
performs a new acoustic and electronic score that draws upon chance procedure and interactive technologies.
In Open Space, Newton Armstrong describes Coffey’s music as “subtle, weird and devoid of heroics. It’s the kind
of music that resonates for days after you’ve heard it, and its spaces and gestures continue to form into new and
extraordinary geometries.”
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.691.6500
f: 212.633.1974
[email protected]
newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
US Representation
IMG Artists
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
t: 212.994.3500
f: 212.994.3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
t: +44 20 7622 8549
f: +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
Long-time Company collaborators Robert Wierzel (lighting design), Bjorn Amelan (décor), and Liz Prince
(costume design) designed the immersive, minimalist stage environment.
Co-commissioned by Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ) and the Walker Art Center.
Developed in residence at Arizona State University Gammage Auditorium, Bard College, Alexander Kasser
Theater at Montclair State University, University of Virginia, and the Walker Art Center.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop Reimagined | newyorklivearts.org/#/BTJAZDC
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Danielle Bias
[email protected]
(212) 691-6500 x212
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Celebrates 30th Anniversary
2012-2013 Season Highlights include:
World Premiere of A Meditation on The Rite of Spring (working title) in collaboration with
Anne Bogart and SITI Company at Carolina Performing Arts
Two-week season at The Joyce Theater featuring D-Man in the Waters
and other repertory with the Orion String Quartet
Tour to 24 cities in the United States and Europe
New York, NY, May 30, 2012 – Over the past 30 years, multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer,
theater director and writer Bill T. Jones and his celebrated company of dancers have left an
indelible mark on the performing arts landscape and are today one of the most influential and
recognizable forces in the dance-theater world. In the 2012-2013 season, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company celebrates its 30th Anniversary with a tour to 24 cities in the United
States and Europe; a highly anticipated World Premiere co-production with Anne Bogart and SITI
Company; and a New York City season at The Joyce Theater with the Orion String Quartet
featuring D-Man in the Waters, a classic work not seen in New York since 2002.
“This season, as the company celebrates 30 years of creative discourse, I am grateful to the artists
and audiences who have participated in the vision that Arnie Zane and I created together in 1982,”
said Bill T. Jones. “Since that time, the Company has in some ways become a microcosm of the
world that I would like to live in: a diverse group of talented personalities working together. It is
fitting that during this milestone year we find ourselves settled in a new artistic home at New York
Live Arts, with ambitious new work in development and on tour. We are wild about the future.”
In September, the Company will embark on a two-month European tour to Germany, Italy,
France and The Netherlands. A U.S. tour will begin in November with stops in Memphis, TN;
Winston-Salem, NC; St. Petersburg, FL; Chattanooga, TN; St. Louis, MO; Chapel Hill, NC; College
Park, MD; Philadelphia, PA; Purchase, NY; Beaver Creek, CO; New York, NY; Tempe, AZ; and Tulsa,
OK. Touring programs include Story/Time, which premiered in 2012 and is inspired by John Cage’s
Indeterminacy; the Play and Play featuring new and reconstructed works set to classical music,
including D-Man in the Waters; Body Against Body, a collection of early works that examine Bill T.
Jones and Arnie Zane’s roots in the avant-garde; and the World Premiere of A Meditation on The
Rite of Spring (working title), a major new work under development in collaboration with Anne
Bogart and SITI Company.
1
Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as
part of “The Rite of Spring at One Hundred” nine-month centennial festival, Bill T. Jones and Anne
Bogart will join forces to create a new dance-theater work reflecting on the significance and themes
of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. In A Meditation on The Rite of Spring (working title), the Bill
T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company will explore the impact of Stravinsky’s
revolutionary piece of music and imagine the consequence of hearing it played for the very first
time. After the World Premiere performance at Carolina Performing Arts on January 25-26,
the work will tour to the University of Maryland in College Park, MD (February 8-9) and SUNY
Purchase in Purchase, NY (March 2). Later in March, the Company will have its New York City
season (March 26-31 & April 2-7) at The Joyce Theater with two repertory programs featuring
music-inspired works accompanied live by the Orion String Quartet, including two NY premieres
and the return of the rarely seen D-Man in the Waters. The Company last appeared at The Joyce
Theater in 2009 with Serenade/The Proposition.
A LOOK BACK: 30 YEARS OF AN ARTISTIC LIFE
30 years ago, after meeting at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY), Bill T.
Jones and Arnie Zane (1948 – 1988) co-founded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and
emerged onto the international scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music’s inaugural Next Wave Festival. Together, Jones and Zane redefined
the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change
the face of American dance.
Jones, who recently turned 60, is one of the most important American artists working today. He
is recognized as a striking performer, a prolific creator of post-modern contemporary dance and
Broadway theater, and a provocative choreographer who fearlessly tackles political and social
concerns in his work.
Over the past three decades, Jones has created more than 140 works for the Company, earning
significant commissions, awards and recognition along the way. His major honors include a 1994
MacArthur “Genius” Award and the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. In 2009 he was inducted into
the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by
the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. He and the Company have received major commissions from
Lincoln Center Festival, Peak Performances at Montclair State University (NJ), Ravinia Festival,
Walker Art Center and many other leading institutions. He has also received commissions to create
works for companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera
Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet, and others.
Some of Jones’s most courageous and controversial productions have addressed issues of race,
religion, mortality and illness, freedom and slavery – often drawing ire and awe at the same time:
Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990, Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994, Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early…
Visibility Was Poor (1996, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, IA); You Walk? (2000, European Capital
of Culture 2000, Bolgna, Italy); Blind Date (2006, Peak Performances at Montclair State
University); Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); and Fondly Do We Hope…
Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL).
2
Jones has long been revered for his highly collaborative, interdisciplinary process, having worked
over the years with such notable artists as Keith Haring, Cassandra Wilson, Orion String Quartet,
the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Fred Hersch, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Julius
Hemphill, Toni Morrison, Max Roach, Jessye Norman, and Daniel Bernard Roumain, among
others. His current collaboration with director Anne Bogart and SITI Company on A Meditation on
The Rite of Spring (working title) for January 2013 is a continuation of this shared creative practice.
NEW HORIZONS
In addition to his intriguing collaborations and work for his company, Jones has won international
renown for his work on Broadway. He earned two Tony Awards for Best Choreography – one in
2010 for the critically acclaimed FELA!, the musical he co-conceived, co-wrote, directed and
choreographed, receiving 11 Tony Award nominations overall, and another in 2007 for Spring
Awakening. He won an Obie Award for Spring Awakening’s 2006 off-Broadway run and a 2006
Lucille Lortel Award for his choreography of the off-Broadway production of The Seven.
In 2011, Jones opened a new chapter in his career and the Company’s history with the merger of the
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and the iconic Dance Theater Workshop to form New
York Live Arts, an organization that supports the nation’s dance and movement-based artists
through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating and which serves as the home of
the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Jones was named Executive Artistic Director of the
organization, where he works closely with Artistic Director Carla Peterson and Chief Executive
Officer and Executive Director Jean Davidson to expand the cultural footprint of movement-based
artists and performance. Jones also continues in his role as Artistic Director of his company,
working with Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong to create new work, reconsider historically
significant pieces, and continue to contribute to “the world of ideas.”
EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES
In its 30th Anniversary season, the Company will continue to expand its dynamic education program,
led by Leah Cox. The 2012-2013 academic year marks the Company’s fourth year in partnership
with the Bard College Dance Program, where Company teaching artists and Live Arts guest artists
teach an innovative curriculum designed to cultivate the next generation of dancemakers and
creative thinkers. During the next academic year, Bard students will learn Cunningham technique
from former Cunningham dancers Melissa Toogood and Daniel Squire, as well as other approaches
to movement from teacher/dancer/choreographer Jesse Zaritt and former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company dancers Stuart Singer and Asli Bulbul. Additionally, students at university and
college dance programs throughout the U.S. will reconstruct significant Company works for
performance. The Company also conducts intensive workshops for professional and preprofessional dancers and produces a broad range of discussion events at home and on the road.
Upcoming reconstruction projects include: Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger and Mercy 10x8
on a Circle at California State University-Long Beach; D-Man in the Waters (Part I) and The
Gift/No God Logic at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; D-Man in the Waters (Part I) at the
Boston Conservatory; D-Man in the Waters (Part I) at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Spent
3
Days Out Yonder at Loyola Marymount University; D-Man in the Waters (Part I) at University of
Michigan; D-Man in the Waters at University of North Carolina School of the Arts; and a
performance tour of D-Man in the Waters (Part I) in Taiwan by students of Taipei National
University of the Arts.
2012-2013 TOUR PROGRAMS
A Meditation on The Rite of Spring (2013) (working title) represents an intriguing and powerful
collaboration between two leading American directors and their companies. Coinciding with the
100th anniversary of the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company and SITI Company combine forces to explore the impact of this revolutionary
piece of music, imagining the consequence of hearing the score played for the very first time.
Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts.
Story/Time (2012) is inspired by legendary artist and composer John Cage’s Indeterminacy
(1958), a work in which Cage sat alone on stage reading an unbroken stream of one-minute stories
to a small audience. In Story/Time, Bill T. Jones reads his own one-minute stories amidst a
spellbinding landscape of dance and original music composed and mixed live by collaborator Ted
Coffey. Mentored by Cage's modernist approach and governed by chance procedures, this
“wondrously original” (Dance Magazine) and “radically engaging” (The Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
work is an ever-changing score that yields a unique performance each night. The San Francisco
Chronicle called it “…a dance theater rollercoaster with surprises around every corner.” Cocommissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State University (NJ) and the Walker Art Center.
Play and Play features a collection of works set to chamber music, including D-Man in the Waters,
Spent Days Out Yonder, and Continuous Replay, performed with a new musical score. All
performances of the program in New York and on tour will be accompanied by live music.
Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major for Strings, Op. 20, D-Man in the Waters (1989, revised
1998) is Jones’s joyful tour de force and was recently reconstructed in full for the first time since
2002. The New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award-winning classic is a celebration of life
and the resiliency of the human spirit that embodies loss, hope and triumph. The New York Times
stated, “Rarely has one seen a dance company throw itself onto the stage with such kinetic
exaltation.”
Spent Days Out Yonder (2001) is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, a
meditation on the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The
choreography is firmly rooted in Jones’s elegant, weighted movement vocabulary, paired with a
sublime score performed live by a local string octet.
Continuous Replay (1977, 1991) is a work that traces Arnie Zane’s interests in photography and film.
Originally choreographed by Zane in 1977 as a solo titled Hand Dance and later revised as a group
work by Bill T. Jones in 1991, Continuous Replay is based on 45 precise gestures accumulated in
space and time. A new score by Jerome Begin incorporates material from Ludwig Van Beethoven's
String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1 and String Quartet Op. 135.
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New works for the program to be premiered during the 2012-2013 season will be Ravel: Landscape
or Portrait? set to Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, and Story set to Franz Schubert’s
String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor (Death and the Maiden).
Body Against Body (2011) returns to Bill T. Jones’s roots in the avant-garde with a program that
revives and reconsiders the challenging, groundbreaking works that launched Jones and the late
Arnie Zane, his partner and collaborator of 17 years. Still some of the most significant examples of
the postmodern aesthetic, these pieces redefined the duet form and changed the face of American
dance. Both conceptually and physically rigorous, the works take on new life through the diverse
dancers of Jones’s company, providing a rare look at the origins of an iconoclastic artistic
sensibility. Commissioned by the ICA/Boston.
* 2012-2013 TOUR & 30th ANNIVERSARY SEASON SCHEDULE ATTACHED *
About Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Bill T. Jones, a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer, has
received major honors ranging from a 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award to Kennedy Center Honors
in 2010. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named “An
Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into
Broadway theater resulted in a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically
acclaimed FELA!, the musical co-conceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by Mr.
Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography in Spring Awakening, as well as
an Obie Award for the show’s 2006 off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway
production of The Seven earned him a 2006 Lucille Lortel Award. In 2011, Mr. Jones was named
Executive Artistic Director of New York Lives Arts.
Now in its 30th year, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was born out of an 11-year
collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they redefined
the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change
the face of American dance. Today, the nine member Company has performed worldwide in over
200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent and is recognized as one of the most innovative
and powerful forces in the dance-theater world. In 2011, the Company merged with Dance Theater
Workshop to form New York Live Arts.
About New York Live Arts
New York Live Arts strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and
movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating. In
addition to our deep commitment to individual artists at all stages of their careers, we strive to
create rich, meaningful experiences for our audiences by engaging them in ways that are intimate
and thought-provoking. With our audience, we seek to become a place for dance that is vital to the
fabric of social and cultural life in New York, the United States and beyond.
Formed in February 2011 by a merger of Dance Theater Workshop and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company, New York Live Arts is a re-imagining of the legacies of these two extraordinary
organizations. New York Live Arts is located at 219 West 19th Street in New York City and is led by
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Bill T. Jones as Executive Artistic Director, Carla Peterson as Artistic Director, and Jean Davidson
as Executive Director and CEO. www.newyorklivearts.org
Funding Support
The creation of new work by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is made possible with
generous support from the company’s Partners in Creation: Joe Azrack & Abigail Congdon, Anne
Delaney, Eleanor Friedman, Sandra Eskin, Ruth & Stephen Hendel, Ellen Poss, and Jane Bovingdon
Semel & Terry Semel.
Major support for New York Live Arts is provided by: Bloomberg Philanthropies, Robert Sterling
Clark Foundation, Con Edison, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Japan
Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz
Gilmore Foundation, MetLife Foundation, , New York Community Trust, Shubert Foundation,
Jerome Robbins Foundation, Scherman Foundation and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. New
York Live Arts is supported by public funds administered by the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
PRESS KITS AND DIGITAL IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
###
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30th Anniversary Tour Schedule – 2012-2013 Season
July 25-29, 2012
Becket, MA
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Ted
Shawn Theater
Story/Time
http://jacobspillow.org/
October 18-20, 2012
Creteil, France
Maison des Arts Creteil
Play and Play
www.maccreteil.com
October 23, 2012
Maubeuge, France
La Luna
Play and Play
www.lemanege.com
July 31, 2012
Vienna, VA
Wolf Trap Filene Center
Story/Time
www.wolftrap.org
October 25, 2012
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Carré Theater
Story/Time
www.theatercarre.nl
September 27 & 28, 2012
Bonn, Germany
Theater Bonn
Play and Play
www.theater-bonn.de
October 27 & 28, 2012
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Carré Theater
Play and Play
www.theatercarre.nl
September 30, 2012
Neuss, Germany
Stadthalle Neuss
Play and Play
www.neuss.de
November 4, 2012
Memphis, TN
The Buckman Performing Arts Center
Between Us
October 4-6, 2012
Naples, Italy
Teatrino di Corte
Play and Play
www.teatrosancarlo.it
www.stmarysschool.org/thebuckman/
Company residency Nov. 5-6, 2012
October 9, 2012
Ferrara, Italy
Teatro Comunale di Ferrara
Body Against Body
www.teatrocomunaleferrara.it/
October 12 & 13, 2012
Rome, Italy
RomaEuropa Festival
Auditorium Conciliazione
Play and Play
http://romaeuropa.net/
November 8-11, 2012
Winston-Salem, NC
Salem College
Company workshop, showing (11/10)
and Bill T. Jones lecture (11/11)
www.salem.edu
November 13, 2012
Chattanooga, TN
University of Tennessee UTC
Fine Arts Center
Between Us
www.utc.edu/FineArtsCenter/
October 14, 2012
Rome, Italy
RomaEuropa Festival Teatro Eliseo
Story/Time
http://romaeuropa.net/
November 16 & 17, 2012
St. Louis, MO
Edison Theater,
Washington University
Between Us
http://edison.wustl.edu/
January 25 & 26, 2013
Chapel Hill, NC
Carolina Performing Arts
Memorial Hall
A Rite World Premiere!
www.carolinaperformingarts.org
February 8 & 9, 2013
College Park, MD
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
University of Maryland
A Rite
http://claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/
February 21-23, 2013
Philadelphia, PA
The Painted Bride Arts Center
Body Against Body
www.paintedbride.org/
March 2, 2013
Purchase, NY
The Performing Arts Center SUNY
Purchase
A Rite
www.artscenter.org/
March 15, 2013
Beaver Creek, CO
Vilar Center for the Arts
Play and Play
www.vilarpac.org
March 26-31 & April 2-7, 2013
New York, NY
The Joyce Theatre
Play and Play
www.joyce.org
April 20, 2013
Tempe, AZ
ASU Gammage
Play and Play
www.asugammage.org
Company residency April 19-24, 2013
April 27 & 28, 2013
Tulsa, OK
Helmerich Theater Presented by
Choregus Productions
Play and Play
www.choregus.org
Performance dates and programs subject to change
Visit www.newyorklivearts.org for updates
2012-13 Educational Projects
Residencies
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Fall 2012-Spring 2013
Fourth year of an ongoing partnership: 7 dance courses taught by
Live Arts & Company teaching artists each academic year; campuswide events; Company residency Spring 2013.
http://inside.bard.edu/dance/
Montclair State University
Montclair, NJ
Fall 2012/Spring 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of Continuous Replay.
Reconstruction December 2012
Performances Spring 2013
http://www.montclair.edu/arts/theatre-and-dance/
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ
Fall 2012-Spring 2013
Bill T. Jones campus residency Sep. 24-27; teaching artist residency
Nov. 5-9; full company residency Apr. 19-24.
http://www.asugammage.com/
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Winter 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of D-Man in the Waters
(Part I).
Reconstruction January 2013
Performances February 7-10, 2013
http://www.music.umich.edu/departments/dance/index.php
Reconstructions
California State University-Long Beach
Long Beach, CA
Summer/Fall 2012
Reconstruction and student performances of Reading, Mercy and the
Artificial Nigger and Mercy 10x8 on a Circle.
Performances November 16-17, 2012
http://www.csulb.edu/depts/dance/
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN
Fall 2012
Reconstruction and student performances of D-Man in the Waters
(Part I) and The Gift/No God Logic.
Reconstruction September-October, 2012
Performances December 6-9, 2012
https://theatre.umn.edu/dance/
Boston Conservatory
Boston, MA
Fall 2012/Spring 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of D-Man in the Waters
(Part I).
Reconstruction September-October 2012
Performances November 1-4, 2012; April 18-20, 2013
http://www.bostonconservatory.edu/dance
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI
Fall 2012/Spring 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of D-Man in the Waters
(Part I).
Reconstruction October-November 2012
Performances February 14-16, 2013
www.dance.wisc.edu
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA
Fall 2012/Spring 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of Spent Days Out Yonder.
Reconstruction Fall semester 2012
Performances December 5-8, 2012
http://cfa.lmu.edu/programs/dance.htm
University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Winston-Salem, NC
Spring 2013
Reconstruction and student performances of D-Man in the Waters.
Reconstruction January 2013
Performances February 21-24, 2013
http://www.uncsa.edu/dance/
Taipei National University of the Arts
Taipei, Taiwan
Spring 2013
Performance tour of D-Man in the Waters (Part I), Reconstructed and
performed in Spring 2012.
Performance dates TBC
Workshops
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN
November 2-3, 2012
Technique and composition workshop with Company members.
http://www.memphis.edu
Salem College
Winston-Salem, NC
November 8-10, 2012
Workshop with Company members, informal performance, and Bill T.
Jones lecture.
http://www.salem.edu/
VISIT www.newyorklivearts.org FOR UPDATES
Dates and programs subject to change.
Company History
Now in its 30th year, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was born out of an 11-year collaboration between
Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of
identity, form and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. The Company emerged onto the
international scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum, which featured legendary drummer Max
Roach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the 10-member Company has performed worldwide in over 200
cities in 30 countries on every major continent. Today, the Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and
powerful forces in the modern dance world.
The repertory of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and
stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft and includes music-driven works as well as works using a variety
of texts. The Company has been acknowledged for its intensely collaborative method of creation that has included
artists as diverse as Keith Haring, Cassandra Wilson, The Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center,
Fred Hersch, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Julius Hemphill and Daniel Bernard Roumain, among others. The
collaborations of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with visual artists were the subject of Art Performs Life
(1998), a groundbreaking exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Some of its most celebrated creations are evening length works including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The
Promised Land (1990, Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994, Biennale de la Danse in
Lyon, France); We Set Out Early… Visibility Was Poor (1996, Hancher Auditorium,Iowa City, IA); You Walk? (2000,
European Capital of Culture 2000,Bolgna, Italy); Blind Date (2006, Peak Performances at Montclair State University);
Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); and Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia
Festival, Highland Park, IL). The ongoing, site-specific, Another Evening was last performed in its seventh incarnation as
Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia).
The Company has also produced two evenings centered on Bill T. Jones’s solo performance: The Breathing Show (1999,
Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, IA) and As I Was Saying… (2005, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN).
The Company has been featured in many publications, and one of the most in-depth examinations of Bill T. Jones and
Arnie Zane’s collaborations can be found in Body Against Body: The Dance and Other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and
Arnie Zane (1989 - Station Hill Press) edited by Elizabeth Zimmer.
The Company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and Performance Awards ("Bessie") for
Chapel/Chapter at Harlem Stage (2006), The Table Project (2001), D-Man in the Waters (1989 and 2001), musical
scoring and costume design for Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and for the
groundbreaking Joyce Theater season (1986). The Company was nominated for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for
“Outstanding Achievement in Dance and Best New Dance Production” for We Set Out Early… Visibility was Poor.
The Company celebrated its landmark 20th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with 37 guest artists
including Susan Sarandon, Cassandra Wilson and Vernon Reid. The Phantom Project: The 20th Season presented a
diverse repertoire of over 15 revivals and new works.
During the Company’s 25th anniversary season in 2007, Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, IL offered the Company its
most significant commission to date: to create a work to honor the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The
Company created three new productions in response: 100 Migrations (2008), a site-specific community performance
project; Serenade/The Proposition (2008), examining the nature of history; and Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We
Pray (2009), the making of which is the subject of a feature-length documentary by Kartemquin Films entitled A Good
Man, which was broadcast on PBS American Masters in 2011.
The Company has distinguished itself through extensive community outreach and educational programs, including
partnerships with Bard College, where company members teach an innovative curriculum rooted in the Company’s
creative model and highly collaborative methods; and with Lincoln Center Institute, which uses Company works in its
educator-training and in-school repertory programs. University and college dance programs throughout the U.S. work
with the Company to reconstruct significant works for their students. The Company conducts intensive workshops for
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professional and pre-professional dancers and produces a broad range of discussion events at home and on the road,
all born from the strong desire to “participate in the world of ideas.”
In 2010, the Company announced a groundbreaking merger with Dance Theater Workshop that The New York Times
said could “alter the contemporary dance landscape in New York.” The organization, called New York Live Arts, strives
to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to
producing, presenting and educating. For more information: www.newyorklivearts.org
2
Bill T. Jones Biography
Bill T. Jones (Artistic Director/Co-Founder/Choreographer), a multi-talented artist,
choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer, has received major honors ranging from a
1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award to Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. He was inducted into the
American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure”
by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into Broadway theater resulted in a
2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed FELA!, the new musical coconceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by Mr. Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony
Award for Best Choreography in Spring Awakening as well as an Obie Award for the show’s
2006 off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway production of The Seven
earned him a 2006 Lucille Lortel Award.
Mr. Jones began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY), where he studied
classical ballet and modern dance. After living in Amsterdam, Mr. Jones returned to SUNY, where he became cofounder of the American Dance Asylum in 1973. In 1982 he formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (then
called Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company) with his late partner, Arnie Zane. In 2011, Mr. Jones was named Executive
Artistic Director of New York Lives Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the
nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating. For more
information visit www.newyorklivearts.org.
In addition to creating more than 140 works for his own company, Mr. Jones has received many commissions to create
dances for modern and ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera
Ballet, and Berlin Opera Ballet, among others. In 1995, Mr. Jones directed and performed in a collaborative work with
Toni Morrison and Max Roach, Degga, at Alice Tully Hall, commissioned by Lincoln Center’s Serious Fun Festival. His
collaboration with Jessye Norman, How! Do! We! Do!, premiered at New York’s City Center in 1999.
His work in dance has been recognized with the 2010 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005
Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize;
and the 1993 Dance Magazine Award. His additional awards include the Harlem Renaissance Award in 2005; the
Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award in 1991; multiple New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for his
works The Table Project (2001), The Breathing Show (2001), D-Man in the Waters (1989) and the Company’s
groundbreaking season at the Joyce Theater (1986). In 1980, 1981 and 1982, Mr. Jones was the recipient of
Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1979 he was granted the Creative Artists
Public Service Award in Choreography.
Mr. Jones was profiled on NBC Nightly News and The Today Show in 2010 and was a guest on the Colbert Report in
2009. Also in 2010, he was featured in HBO’s documentary series MASTERCLASS, which follows notable artists as they
mentor aspiring young artists. In 2009, Mr. Jones appeared on one of the final episodes of Bill Moyers Journal,
discussing his Lincoln suite of works. He was also one of 22 prominent black Americans featured in the HBO
documentary The Black List in 2008. In 2004, ARTE France and Bel Air Media produced Bill T. Jones–Solos, highlighting
three of his iconic solos from a cinematic point of view. The making of Still/Here was the subject of a documentary by
Bill Moyers and David Grubin entitled Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers in 1997. Additional television credits
include telecasts of his works Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1992) and Fever Swamp (1985) on
PBS’s “Great Performances” Series. In 2001, D-Man in the Waters was broadcast on the Emmy-winning documentary
Free to Dance.
Bill T. Jones's interest in new media and digital technology has resulted in collaborations with the team of Paul Kaiser,
Shelley Eshkar and Marc Downie, now known as OpenEnded Group. The collaborations include After Ghostcatching –
the 10th Anniversary re-imagining of Ghostcatching (2010, SITE Sante Fe Eighth International Biennial); 22 (2004,
Arizona State University's Institute for Studies In The Arts and Technology, Tempe, AZ); and Ghostcatching - A Virtual
Dance Installation (1999, Cooper Union, New York, NY).
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He has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, Columbia College,
Skidmore College, the Juilliard School, Swarthmore College and the State University of New York at Binghamton
Distinguished Alumni Award, where he began his dance training with studies in classical ballet and modern dance.
Mr. Jones’s memoir, Last Night on Earth, was published by Pantheon Books in 1995. An in-depth look at the work of Bill
T. Jones and Arnie Zane can be found in Body Against Body: The Dance and Other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and
Arnie Zane, published by Station Hill Press in 1989. Hyperion Books published Dance, a children’s book written by Bill T.
Jones and photographer Susan Kuklin in 1998. Mr. Jones contributed to Continuous Replay: The Photography of Arnie
Zane, published by MIT Press in 1999.
In addition to his Company and Broadway work, Mr. Jones also choreographed Sir Michael Tippet’s New Year (1990) for
Houston Grand Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. His Mother of Three Sons was performed at the Munich
Biennale, New York City Opera and the Houston Grand Opera. Mr. Jones also directed Lost in the Stars for the Boston
Lyric Opera. Additional theater projects include co-directing Perfect Courage with Rhodessa Jones for Festival 2000 in
1990. In 1994, he directed Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain for The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN.
2
Dancer Biographies
Antonio Brown, a native of Cleveland, OH, began his dance training at the Cleveland School of the
Arts and received his BFA from The Juilliard School in 2007. Over the years he has performed works
by Ohad Naharin, Jiri Kylian, Jose Limon, Nilas Martins, Susan Marshall, Larry Keigwin, Aszure Barton
and many others. In addition to being a member of the Company, Mr. Brown also performs with
Camille A. Brown & Dancers and Gregory Dolbashin’s “The DASH Ensemble”. Mr. Brown joined the
Company in 2007 and is grateful to share his gifts and talents with the world.
Talli Jackson, originally from Liberty, NY, first trained with Livia Vanaver at the Vanaver Caravan
Dance Institute in New York. With the Vanaver Caravan he performed in venues throughout the U.S.
and Europe. Mr. Jackson has performed works by Marianela Boan, David Dorfman, Francesca Harper,
Heidi Latsky and Sandy Silva. He received full scholarships from the American Dance Festival in 2006
and 2008, the Bates Dance Festival and the Ailey School. Mr. Jackson joined the Company in 2009.
Shayla-Vie Jenkins, originally from Ewing, NJ, began dance training at Watson Johnson Dance
Theater and Mercer County Performing Arts School. In 2004, she graduated with honors from
Fordham University. She has performed with The Kevin Wynn Collection, Nathan Trice Rituals, The
Francesca Harper Project and Yaa Samar Dance Theater. In 2008, she was featured in Dance
Magazine's "On The Rise" performers. Ms. Jenkins joined the Company in 2005.
LaMichael Leonard, Jr. is from Tallahassee, Florida. He began his professional dance career with
Martha Graham Dance Company. He made is international debut in Athens, Greece soon after
earning his BFA from New World School of the Arts in Miami, FL. LaMichael choreographs for the
NBA’s Miami Heat Dance Team. Mr. Leonard has also performed with Buglisi Dance and West Coast
Theatre Project. LaMichael has been dancing with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company since
2007.
I-Ling Liu, a native of Taiwan, received her BFA from Taipei National University of the Arts in 2005.
She has performed with Ku and Dancers, Taipei Crossover Dance Company, Image in Motion Theater
Company, Neo-Classic Dance Company and in works by Trisha Brown, Lin Hwai-Min and Yang MingLung. Ms. Liu joined the Company in 2008.
Erick Montes joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 2003. He trained at the
National School of Classical and Contemporary Dance in Mexico City, and in 2004 he was featured
in Dance Magazine’s “25 To Watch”. He holds a fellowship in choreography from The New York
Foundation for the Arts. He has presented his choreography in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. In
2010 he worked in collaboration with choreographers Jennifer Nugent and Yin Mey in the creation
of a Ballet for the National Dance Academy of Beijing, China.
Jennifer Nugent is originally from Miami, FL. She was a member of David Dorfman Dance and has
performed with Martha Clarke, Daniel Lepkoff, Lisa Race, Nina Winthrop, Kate Weare, Bill Young,
Colleen Thomas, Gerri Houlihan, and Dale Andre. She has been a guest artist at universities and
dance festivals throughout the U.S., Russia, Korea and Vietnam. Ms. Nugent joined the Company in
2009.
Joseph Poulson, originally from Philadelphia, PA, received undergraduate and graduate degrees
from the U. of Iowa and Bennington College, respectively. From 2000 to 2010 he was a member of
Susan Marshall & Company, David Dorfman Dance, Bill Young/Colleen Thomas and Dancers,
Creach/Co and acanarytorsi, receiving a BESSIE in 2009. He has also performed with Elena
Demyanenko, Jeanine Durning, Mark Morris Dance Group, Lisa Race, Susan Scorbatti, Peter Schmitz,
Will Swanson and Punchdrunk’s New York production of ‘Sleep No More’. Mr. Poulson is the newest
company member having joined in summer 2012.
Jenna Riegel, a native of Fairfield, IA, has been a New York-based dancer, performer and teacher
since 2007. Ms. Riegel holds an M.F.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa and a B.A.
in Theatre Arts from Maharishi University of Management. She has performed with Michel
Kouakou’s Daara Dance, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, Tania Isaac Dance and Bill
Young/Colleen Thomas & Company. She currently tours nationally and internationally as a company
member of David Dorfman Dance, Alexandra/Beller Dances and johannes weiland.
Resident Artists
Bjorn G. Amelan (Creative Director/Set Designer) was the partner of the late fashion designer Patrick Kelly from
1983 until Mr. Kelly passed away on January 1, 1990. Mr. Amelan moved to the United States to begin his collaboration
with Bill T. Jones in 1993. He has designed sets for the following works by Bill T. Jones: Green and Blue (1997) for the
Lyon Opera Ballet; How! Do! We! Do! (1999) for Bill T. Jones and Jessye Norman, in conjunction with the Lincoln
Center’s Great Performers New Visions series; We Set Out Early… Visibility Was Poor (1997), The Breathing Show
(1999), You Walk? (2000), The Table Project (2001), Another Evening (2002), Verbum (2002), WorldWithout/In (2002),
Black Suzanne (2002), Reading, Mercy and The Artificial Nigger (2003), Mercy 10 x 8 on a Circle (2003), Chaconne
(2003), and Blind Date (2005) for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Mr. Amelan is the recipient of a 2001
“Bessie” for his designs of The Breathing Show and The Table Project.
Liz Prince (Costume Designer) has worked extensively with Bill T. Jones since 1990 designing for his company as well
as his productions on: Boston Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Other work includes
designing for: Doug Varone ( Doug Varone and Dancers, Jose Limon Dance Company, Dayton Contemporary Dance
Company), Trey McIntyre, Mark Dendy, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project (Meg Stuart, Lucy Guerin),
Tamar Rogoff (Claire Danes), PILOBOLUS, Neil Greenberg, Jane Comfort , Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, Arthur Aviles,
Larry Goldhuber, David Dorfman and LAVA. Her costumes have been exhibited at: The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art and Snug Harbor Cultural Center. She received a 1990 New
York Dance and Performance Award for costume design.
Robert Wierzel (Lighting Designer) has worked with artists in theatre, dance, new music, opera and museums, on
stages throughout the country and abroad. He has worked with choreographer Bill T. Jones and his company since 1985.
Projects include Blind Date, Another Evening/I Bow Down, Still/Here, You Walk?, Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The
Promised Land, How To Walk An Elephant, and We Set Out Early, Visibility Was Poor. Other works with Bill T. Jones
include projects at the Guthrie Theatre, Lyon Opera Ballet, Deutsche Opera Ballet (Berlin), Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric
Opera, the Welsh dance company Diversions, and London’s Contemporary Dance Trust. Robert has also worked with
choreographers Trisha Brown, Doug Varone, Donna Uchizono, Larry Goldhuber, Heidi Latsky, Sean Curran,
Molissa Fenley, Susan Marshall, Margo Sappington, Alonzo King and Joann Fregalette-Jansen. Additional credits include
national and international opera companies, Broadway and regional theater. Mr. Wierzel is currently on the faculty of
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Janet Wong (Associate Artistic Director) was born in Hong Kong and trained in Hong Kong and London. Upon
graduation she joined the Berlin Ballet where she first met Bill when he was invited to choreograph on the company. In
1993, she moved to New York to pursue other interests. Ms. Wong became Rehearsal Director of the company in 1996
and Associate Artistic Director in August 2006.
Guest Artists
Ted Coffey (Story/Time Composer) makes acoustic and electronic chamber music, interactive installations, and songs.
His work has been presented in concerts and festivals across North America, Europe and Asia, at such venues as
Judson Church, The Knitting Factory, Symphony Space, and Lincoln Center (NYC), The Lab, New Langton Arts and
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), the Korean National University of the Arts (Seoul), The Loos Foundation (The
Hague), and ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany). Coffey’s electroacoustic composition has been featured at ICMC (2004, 2005,
2006), SEAMUS (2001, 2009, 2010, 2011), the Spark Festival (2009), the Third Practice Festival (2005, 2008, 2009),
and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2010), among others. In Open Space, Newton Armstrong
described Coffey’s music as “subtle, weird and devoid of heroics. It’s the kind of music that resonates for days after
you’ve heard it, and its spaces and gestures continue to form into new and extraordinary geometries.” His writings on
the aesthetics and social politics of transmissive networks in the arts have been honored with significant awards from
the Josephine De Kármán and Andrew C. Mellon Foundations. Coffey studied composition with Jon Appleton, Christian
Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Paul Lansky, and others, earning degrees at Dartmouth (AB), Mills College (MFA) and Princeton
(MFA, PhD). He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses in
composition, music technologies, critical theory, and pop. This is Coffey's first collaboration with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company.
Quotables
“[Jones’s] gifts: pungent, purposeful character development, compelling storytelling and pure-dance interludes of
slippery and often deeply romantic choreography.”
- Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post
“These memories…are poignant, hilarious and sometimes terrifying.”
- Robert Johnson, The Star-Ledger, on Story/Time
“…a dance theater rollercoaster with surprises around every corner.”
- Claudia Bauer, The San Francisco Chronicle, on Story/Time
“Bill T. Jones unadorned is a revelation.”
- Thea Singer, The Boston Globe, on Body Against Body
“Moment by moment the Jones/Zane choreography knows how to grab your attention. Pronounced contrasts of
dynamics, space, direction and scale proliferate.”
- Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times, on Body Against Body
“The river of choreography by Jones, Wong, and the dancers features Jones’ characteristically bold, juicy,
unapologetically eclectic style…”
- Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, on Serenade/The Proposition
“…the work of a mature artist at the peak of his powers… [Bill T. Jones] has created a thing of immense beauty and
consequence.”
- Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times, on Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray
“Jones is larger than life and then some.”
- David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle, on A Good Man
“Jones is not a choreographer in the sense that he just makes dances. He likes to tackle unlikely theatrical themes in
unconventional ways…”
- Hilary Ostlere, The Financial Times
“No other dancer-choreographer working today allows past, present, and future to mingle so freely in his body.”
- Laura Jacobs, Vanity Fair
“Bill T. Jones, choreographer, philosopher, and political commentator, makes works of art that reflect the turmoil at the
center of our society.”
- Iris Fanger, The Patriot Ledger
“It's a great story, and one told with enormous verve in Bill T Jones's kaleidoscopic production. The dancing is ecstatic,
the music lifts the spirits, and the stage is alive with movement.”
- Michael Billington, The Guardian, on FELA!
March 14, 2011
Profile: Bill T. Jones, a master of modern dance
After receiving Kennedy Center Honors, Bill T. Jones remembers his long career as a dancer and choreographer,
and he discusses his future plans.
By Iris Fanger
Two men are dancing on stage, the small, tightly coiled white man darting around the 6-foot-1 black man who projects an
elegant, riveting charisma. The year is 1981; they have been performing together for eight years. However it is still new
that they are partnering each other in ways that men usually treat women – lifting each other, trading tender looks.
Although there are established black companies in America by now, seldom are black dancers and white dancers seen
side by side.
Bill T. Jones, the tall man, and Arnie Zane, his partner, talk out loud as they move, pushing another boundary. Zane
recites a speech in Dutch, learned when he spent a period in Amsterdam. Jones recites the names of his 11 brothers and
sisters.
Now, 30 years later, Jones is still speaking his mind, only this time as a trailblazer at the confluence of the avant-garde
and commercial theater. You cannot miss his presence: His company will be performing in Arizona, California, North
Carolina, Virginia, and New York this spring, while "FELA!" – his Broadway musical – starts its world tour in Lagos,
Nigeria, in April and continues in London in the summer.
Born William Tass Jones in Florida to migrant workers,
his family moved north when he was 3. Jones reaches
back often to memories of family, race, and his mother's
sustaining religious beliefs as he choreographs his
works. Zane died in 1988 from complications of AIDS,
but the company they formed in 1982 continues to bear
his name.
Last year, Jones stood in the spotlight at the Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C., to receive the nation's
honors, along with Oprah Winfrey, Sir Paul McCartney,
and others. Jones was recognized for his
accomplishments as a striking performer and creator in the uniquely American art forms of modern dance and musical
theater, not to mention the fearless reflection of political concerns in his work.
The clarity of his outspokenness barely masks the fact that he cares very deeply about his family, his friends and
associates, and his country. "When I dance, as when I talk, I strive for candor," Jones says.
The Kennedy Center Honors capped his annus mirabilis, a year of marvels: three more Tony Awards for the Afro-beat
Broadway musical "FELA!" which he choreographed and directed, to add to his 2007 Tony for "Spring Awakening." In
January, "FELA!" was broadcast live to 375 screens in 21 countries from the stage of London's National Theatre. But
Jones has not stopped wanting more. Returning early last month to the world of contemporary dance, he staged three
works from those early years of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. "Body Against Body," a revival of pieces he
created and performed with Zane, premièred last month at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. Jones cast a man and
a woman, rather than two men, in one of the duets.
"Arnie's no longer here. I'm not the same person. These works must now be seen for their ideas," Jones remarks,
speaking by telephone for two interviews, and in person during the Boston weekend.
The idea of a dance studio was new to Jones when he met Zane and attended his first class in 1971, a year after he
entered the State University of New York, Binghamton. He remembers dancing as a child with his brothers and sisters in
their living room. "We were making up steps," he says. Even after starting classes, "I didn't dance with any great master,"
he recalls. "There were a lot of dance traditions besides the white man's modern dance."
Zane and Jones became a couple and collaborators on stage. Their works followed a path blazed by Merce
Cunningham and the Judson Church experimentalists. Athletic moves and everyday tasks, stripped of décor and
artifice, story and characterizations, became the stuff of their performances, enlivened by movement discovered
through contact improvisation.
Since then, the dances that Jones has presented have ranged from provocative solos to pageantlike evenings,
including works as controversial as "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land" (1992), which dealt with
issues of race, morality, history, and individual freedom of choice. "Last Supper" culminated in a finale that featured
50 to 100 nude bodies on stage – Jones included – chosen from volunteers of all ages in each city where the work
was mounted during a two-year tour. The mass of critical approval was accompanied by an equal volume of
protests. It was denounced by the Vatican.
Jones's reflections on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, "Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray,"
performed by his dancers, several singers, and an actor-narrator, was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in
Illinois in 2009. It will be performed in Parma, Italy, May 7 and 8. Later this year, a feature-length film on the making
of the Lincoln piece will be shown on PBS's "American Masters" series.
The responsibility of running a 10-member company, even with a devoted staff, requires Jones to "keep feeding the
beast," as he calls it, which means constantly creating new repertory. Now that "Fondly Do We Hope" has joined
other works on tour, and "Body Against Body" is ready to go on the road, Jones is deep in plans for another.
"Story/Time" has been simmering in his mind as a way for him to return to the stage without having to dance – he
cites a litany of physical problems. But he recently asked himself, "Where does Bill, the performer, come in? What
do I want to do to come onstage? I thought about what I love to do. I love to talk."
He says he's been "intrigued" by composer John Cage's "Indeterminacy." The 1959 work comprises 90 stories by
Cage, which he read into a microphone from one room, while pianist and composer David Tudor provided
unplanned accompaniment from another.
"Some of the stories are 100 words long, others are
200 words, but each one is delivered in the same
time, one minute each. He's not talking about the
content of the stories," Jones says. "He's a
composer, doing time. I'm hoping to tell my own 90
stories in a way that won't turn into a confession. I'm
an emotional person; I have a lot of strong feelings,
but what if I had to control that in some formal way,
like time?"
Jones intends to make a work for the theater, set
within a bank of images, while the audience is encouraged to watch and participate on their cellphones.
"It would be connecting my inner world, the stories, the ideals that move me, with an external world, [my dancers]
and the audience, then another part of the external world, the social network," he says.
Meanwhile, Jones and his company have completed the move to combine Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
and Dance Theatre Workshop into a new entity, New York Live Arts, conceived as a new model of an artist-led,
producing/presenting organization. He sees the new institution as a chance for a "bigger cultural footprint," rather
than just a focus on dance.
"For me, the big struggle has been to find a place in the world through identity, history, and love," Jones says.
"Though I move on, I must always ask the questions: Whom do I love, and what values are worth holding on to?"
2010 Kennedy Center Honors
One wild ride to the mainstream
By Sarah Kaufman
Sunday, December 5, 2010
IN VALLEY COTTAGE,
N.Y. It was opening night
for the hip-quaking
Afrobeat musical "Fela!"
at London's National
Theatre and, for a few
minutes during the
feverish encore, the
director and
choreographer became its
impromptu star. Elated by
the standing ovation and
the thunderous proof that
he'd won success before a
notoriously staid British
public, Bill T. Jones forever a showman sprang onstage and
danced half-naked with cast members young enough to be his children.
In that moment, one of the dance world's great contrarians was made whole, his contradictions
reconciled: the collaborator and the exhibitionist, the orchestrator of spectacles and the soloist, the
crowd-pleaser and the loner.
"That audience was up, and that audience was hot," Jones recalls. He's curled up on the sofa in his
home in this small Rockland County town about an hour outside New York City. It's a comfy picture:
He's in his socks; there are stacks of art books and tribal rugs on the floor. Windows offer views of a
sloping Japanese-style garden, a fluid terrain of boulders, shrubs and long-legged sculptures by Jones's
partner, Bjorn Amelan, the set designer for Jones's modern-dance troupe, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company. His home, in fact, feels like a set design, as if the rustic decor and tranquil
landscaping have been composed to frame their owner, to make him "pop."
And he does: Against his quiet surroundings, Jones looks retro-flamboyant in his thick black glasses,
navy cardigan and plaid slacks - in blood red. Barry Goldwater meets the drama club.
Those pants assure us there's still some outrageousness in him. After all, we're talking about the dancer
known to flash a sequined codpiece under his miniskirt. (That was in "Last Night on Earth," Jones's
indelible 1992 solo in which he sang, improvised and mimed vigorous sex acts.) He has courted
controversy throughout his 30-some year career, as an outspoken choreographer who has put issues of
race and homophobia up front and finds beauty in surprising places ("Last Supper in Uncle Tom's
Cabin/The Promised Land" showcased scores of naked Washingtonians). His works have drawn ire as
well as praise. "Still/Here," which examined mortality and illness, was the subject of a laudatory Bill
Moyers special on PBS; it was also denounced in the New Yorker and picketed by anti-gay activists.
At 58, Jones appears as lean and granite-muscled as
ever. The only outward indicator of his age is the
whisper of gray on his close-shaven head. But it's
rare that this once-electrifying performer dances
anymore. He let loose on that night in London two
weeks ago "for the young people in the company
who look at me as this older man who they work
for, and they tremble in front of me - well, maybe
they don't tremble, but I can be quite a monster," he
says, his voice low and rolling, a mix of Nat King
Cole, hot fudge and swallowed growls.
"At that moment I danced for them, I took my shirt off, all the things I only do when I feel very safe,"
Jones continues. "And it was an outpouring of love that just lifted me up. There were ladies pinching
my [rear end]. I don't think they've ever had that at the National."
Oh yes, it's safe to say they've never had that at the National, house of Shakespeare - never seen
anything like the explosive sensuality and blistering provocations that Jones funneled into "Fela!,"
plunging audiences into a two-hour dance party, fueled by the energy and loud, funky sound of
Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer, polygamist and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti. It earned Jones this
year's Tony Award for best choreography, to go with 2007's for "Spring Awakening," the rock musical
about teen sexual tumult.
Jones's commercial success has been sudden, but not surprising. The depth of yearning he drew out of
the young characters in "Spring Awakening" and the fierce pride and audacity that drive "Fela!" have
their roots in the more than 100 works he has created for the dance company he founded in 1982 with
his late partner Zane. From its beginnings, the troupe was diverse - Jones is black, and Zane, who died
of complications from AIDS in 1988, was white. Inclusivity was an authentic quality for two gay men
who were open to just about anything and anyone - one of their dancers weighed about 300 pounds.
Jones's works show us the radiant beauty of the marginalized.
Combining dance, theater, text and multimedia, they look like none other: Consider the loopy
vaudeville romp "A Quarreling Pair," based on a puppet play by Jane Bowles, and the wide-ranging
meditation on Abraham Lincoln, "Fondly Do We Hope . . . Fervently Do We Pray," coming to the
Kennedy Center Feb. 24-25.
But you can also view Jones as a misfit, a polarizing gadfly-and since when does the establishment
celebrate gadflies? This moment-hallelujah! - feels like some kind of cultural shift, a reversal of the
culture wars.
Jones views the Kennedy Center Honors - which places him alongside mass-market entertainers Oprah
Winfrey, Paul McCartney, Merle Haggard and Jerry Herman- with some amusement. "It must be for
my formalism, right?" he says, eyebrows spiking wickedly.
He'll claim it for individualists everywhere. In pursuing an idiosyncratic path in a white middle-class
art form, Jones has often been a loner. In his long career as a choreographer of the avant garde, he has
never shied from weaving in the most intimate aspects of his personal story.
It was the deeply personal quality of his art, in fact, that led to him to the spotlight on Broadway and in
London's National Theatre. Jones's understanding of "the role of art in society, art in politics, and being
a black man in society" made him perfect for "Fela!," says producer Stephen Hendel, who landed Jones
after seeing his company perform with a wild garage band. "Bill had the wiring to tell the story in a
way that would be truthful, through movement . . . to bring out the force of the music."
Stepping out
The wiring was hard won. Born in Florida, Jones
was the tenth of 12 children raised by migrant
farmworkers. Earliest memory: a
"phosphorescent-green snake" winding its way
down a tree toward him as his sisters fixed him
breakfast somewhere in South Carolina. Natural
beauty and communal labor formed him. So did
realities of race and class. His father, who could
command the attention of any barroom, would
physically transform himself when he
encountered white men, avoiding eye contact and
muttering "yes suh."
Jones mimes the posture, then lifts his head. "I'll be damned if I'll ever drop my eyes to anyone," he
says evenly.
In 1970 he entered the SUNY Binghamton as a sprinter, but he left a dancer, having fallen in love with
Zane and with dance. Eventually the pair moved to Manhattan, where they fell in with the austere
experimental wing of modern dance. To do anything "popular" was to sell out.
But Jones, unlike most of his downtown colleagues, was too extroverted, too much of a people person
to be entirely indifferent to his audience. Particularly in his own uninhibited and overtly sensuous
dancing, he enjoyed playing to the public, as much as he might push into uncomfortable territory.
Back in the 1980s, he says, "Arnie and I were saying what was truly transgressive was to take our
values intact into the mainstream." They kissed during curtain calls. One memorable evening in the
early 1990s at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, the company's male dancers gyrated stark naked
at the footlights, forming a chorus line of merry jiggling.
He can also raise eyebrows off the stage. In 2000, Jones walked away from a lucrative engagement at
the Spoleto Festival USA to join the NAACP's protest of the Confederate flag at the Charleston, S.C.,
statehouse. Jones blasted the state's "troubling acquiescence to an historic symbol with brutal
associations hurtful to many."
Jones "speaks out more than any other choreographer," says Leah Cox, a longtime company member.
"I think it's part of what has made him somewhat of an outsider and a misfit. Much as he might wish it
otherwise . . . he makes people a little bit on edge, because they know he's going to push and he's not
going to remain quiet if he finds something suspicious."
He has at times frustrated the core of the dance world. In 1994, in an infamous six-page diatribe in the
New Yorker, dance critic Arlene Croce proclaimed her refusal to see "Still/Here" because it was, as she
termed it, "victim art . . . deadly in its power over the human conscience."
"Still/Here," which included videotaped interviews with the terminally ill, was an audience success,
and roundly hailed by critics. But Croce's piece felt like "almost soul death," says Jones. It was also
bewildering: "The thing that really unites all mankind is the fact that we're born, we grow and then we
die. That's age-old. Shakespeare talked about that, and Euripides. So how did that turn into identity
politics?"
Broadway has brought him a whole new public. First lady Michelle Obama attended "Fela!" in New
York last month. In January, the National Theatre will beam live broadcasts of "Fela!" around the
world; Washington's Sidney Harman Hall will screen it Jan. 17
Meanwhile, Jones is breaking new ground in the dance world by merging his company with New
York's Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) a presenting organization - meaning it hosts performances and
covers some of the artists' costs - that owns its own building in Chelsea. Jones's company will pay off
most of DTW's $3 million debt.
The new nonprofit that the two organizations will form, pending approval in January by the New York
State attorney general, will be called New York Live Arts. Jones's company, which like most dance
troupes has had to rely on rented rehearsal space, will be headquartered in the building. It will perform
small-scale works in the 200-seat theater every other year, and Jones will also serve as executive
artistic director of the new entity, which will continue to present work, with his input.
"I want to feel the energy I felt at the National Theatre," says Jones. "They have their 'Hamlets' and
obscure Scottish plays but there's also room for puppets and live music and lots of things." The new
organization has "got to understand the world is changing and we can't sit by smugly and feel superior
to pop culture. We have to go in there and participate."
His idea reflects a bit of a quarrel he has with the modern dance world.
"Modern dance," Jones says, drawing the words out with flourish, "it has made me what I am today."
He chuckles aridly, gazes out at the garden.
"I've had an on-again, off-again love affair with it over the years," he says of the dance field. "Part of it
is, I no longer want to be in the cool club, thumbing my nose at the bourgeoisie."
He has tired of postmodern aloofness. Broadway "is where the edge was, where the power was, for me,
and where the satisfaction was.
"Now, you pay for that satisfaction," he continues. Especially galling: glad-handing for publicity with
those who know nothing of his dance company.
"It's, 'Now you've arrived because you won a Tony.' When that assumption is in the air, wait a minute,
hold it, whoa, whoa, whoa." With a sweep of his arm, Jones holds off an imaginary entertainment
press. "I come from a world that was taught that Broadway was actually the death of creativity."
He pauses, considers the tea Amelan has discreetly set before him. "But then it sounds like I'm biting
the new hand that's being offered to me."
And by all appearances, that hand is wide open. Jones is in discussions about directing and
choreographing another Broadway project, planned for 2013. He'll only divulge that it's based on a
movie from the 1970s with soundtrack by an African American. "It's going to raise a lot of eyebrows,"
he says.
It's bound to. Busting us out of our comfort zones is his specialty. And heck, in this new stage of his
artistic life, he's even challenging his own assumptions.
"When I first started out, it was, 'if it's for a lot of people it can't be good,' " says Jones. "I'm in another
place now. I'm living in parallel universes."
Bill T. Jones' 'Story/Time': dance review
Claudia Bauer
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Modern yet wry, gorgeously danced and at times
discordant, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance
Company's "Story/Time," performed last weekend
at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, is a dance-theater
roller coaster with surprises around every corner.
Jones built his 30-year career on narrative, often
cerebral dance-theater works like "Last Supper at
Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land" and hit a
mainstream peak with Tony Award-winning
choreography for the musicals "Fela!" and "Spring
Awakening." At 60 and retired from dancing, Jones
found himself at the mid-career crossroads that
bedevils so many successful choreographers:
continue to produce work that your audience
members expect, or try something new and hope
they come to see it? Fortunately - for people who
enjoy surprises - Jones chose the latter.
A longtime admirer of John Cage, Jones took
inspiration from the composer's 1958 project
"Indeterminacy," in which Cage reads randomly
ordered one-minute stories over a score composed
Photo: Paul B Goode / Paul B Goode
in isolation by David Tudor. To create
"Story/Time," Jones wrote 150 minute-long vignettes; a selection of them are combined mostly by chance (brief sections are fixed in
demi story arcs - this is Bill T. Jones, after all) into a 70-minute composition that is performed for two nights and then replaced.
Bill T. Jones reads minute-long vignettes in random order from behind a desk
while members of his troupe dance to music by Ted Coffey in the innovative
and involving "Story/Time."
At the emotional and physical center is Jones, who sits at a desk onstage reading the vignettes. Friday night's topics ranged from
Amsterdam's red-light district, child abuse and McDonald's Happy Meals to grief, love and wonder. Jones is compelling when
recalling his late partner, Arnie Zane, who died in 1988, at age 39; a minute later - literally - with deft comic timing Jones recounts the
tale of Edward de Vere passing gas during an audience with Queen Elizabeth I.
Composer Ted Coffey is the Tudor to Jones' Cage, playing an acoustic and electronic collage of guitar, bass, vocal samples and
inventive percussion - one section sounds like hammers banging on steel springs - live. Where Tudor and Cage were distant and
cerebral, Coffey offers a warm and sometimes melodic complement to Jones's rich baritone speaking voice (although two deliberately
overamplified sections were deafening). Atmospheric, ever-changing lighting enhanced the hypnotic effect.
Throughout, nine dancers dressed in yoga pants, bright T-shirts and hoodies orbit around Jones, executing 60-second increments of
choreography that invoke both balletic technique and uninhibited modernity. One minute, duets and trios of dancers bend and swing
their arms, semaphore-style, parallel with their lunging legs. The next, a dancer stands on another's shoulders and falls backward into
the ensemble's outstretched arms. Later, men rolling across the stage encounter a woman and man performing unabashedly naked.
Pulled in 70 directions, Jones' finely trained, fully committed dancers move as one, matching each other's intensity and fluidity with
beautiful consistency.
Not every vignette is a winner (but give it a minute, and there'll be a new one), and random composition means that themes might
repeat, which has a distracting effect. But Jones' gamble is exactly what makes "Story/Time" such a thrill: He's taking the risks, and
we get to enjoy the ride.
In "Story/Time" choreographer Bill T. Jones' company
takes a waltz down memory lane
January 24, 2012
By Robert Johnson
If only we could plug in a cable, and download the contents of Bill T. Jones’ memory. The choreographer,
now almost 60, has led a boldly adventurous life. Born to migrant farmers, he survived an education that
included social upheaval and sexual free-for-alls, becoming a jet-setter who hobnobs with the greats.
The choreographer shares a few of his experiences in “Story/Time,” a piece co-commissioned by Peak
Performances at Montclair State University, where it received its premiere on Saturday. These memories,
and some second-hand tales, are poignant, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. “Story/Time” includes from
50 to 70 vignettes, each delivered in approximately one minute. With this repertoire, Jones could spend
the rest of his life dining out and appearing on talk shows, but eventually, of course, the stories end.
“You live and you learn,” Jones’ father used to
tell him. Then Gus Jones would add, “You die,
and you forget it all.” This impending
dissolution of the self hangs over
“Story/Time” like crepe-paper mourning.
Stationed at a table center-stage, Jones looks
solid if snow-capped, his body crisply outlined
in a white shirt. Yet digital clocks tick off the
seconds and the members of his Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company swirl
around him, their youthful energies a foil to
his recitation. He pauses occasionally for
dramatic effect, but these silences are also a
preview. Sometimes, like Schéhérazade,
Jones seems to be telling stories to keep
himself alive.
“Story/Time” was inspired by a John Cage
lecture called “Indeterminacy” (90 stories in as many minutes) and Jones is paying tribute to the late
composer and his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, whose company was abruptly terminated in
December. Yet “Story/Time” feels gloomy where Cunningham’s “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run”—a dance
incorporating Cage’s lecture—was merely nostalgic.
Jones has followed Cunningham’s use of chance procedures to determine the order of the program, yet
correspondences between dance and text reveal a guiding hand. Dancers roll across the floor, their clothes
smoking as if on fire, as Jones recalls his mother in a paroxysm of grief. Various combinations of dancers
portray a recurring story about a criminal landlord. “Story/Time” has been carefully pruned to make it
easy to digest. The dancers are slick and elegant movers, and Jones is not above supplying a snappy
ending.
How much “Story/Time” recycles Jones’ earlier works is unclear. The catch-me-I’m-falling group exercise
appeared in “Blind Date;” and the story of Noah and the Flood was central to “Another Evening: I Bow
Down.” Some overlapping partnering moves recall “Monkey Run Road,” and the whole evening seems to
develop the concepts of Jones’ solo “As I Was Saying.” Yet “Story/Time” is not exactly a Cunningham
“Event.”
Set designer Bjorn G. Amelan has supplied transparent room-dividers and a sofa, wryly suggesting that
Jones’ memories resemble mental furniture. Much of this brilliant work, set to an eclectic score by Ted
Coffey, depends upon a tension between the immediacy of lived experience—dancing, or biting into a
juicy, green apple—and our subsequent need to measure, re-arrange and transmit our impressions before
they vanish forever.
2 Dances with stories by Bill T. Jones & Co.
Article by: Caroline Palmer, Special to the Star Tribune | February 17, 2012
REVIEW: Jones explores interplay of movement and words, as well as music and the element of chance.
Bill T. Jones performs his “life piece” at a recent residency week at the Walker.
Photo by: Tom Wallace
Before launching into his radically engaging new work "Story/Time" at the Walker Art Center choreographer Bill T.
Jones leads the audience in a "conceptual warm-up" exercise. He asks us to raise a hand when we think a minute
has passed. Most everyone is early by several seconds. It's the first of many instances during the evening when we
are reminded that time is not a fixed concept. It shifts and bends according to circumstances -- many beyond our
control.
"Story/Time" is comprised of 70 one-minute long stories written and read by Jones, a maverick mover who remains
seated at a desk for the duration. The nine members of his New York-based troupe swirl around him on a stage
marked off with a numbered grid. Chance procedures govern some content and performance order. These elements
reference the visionary John Cage, whose 1958 piece "Indeterminacy" inspired Jones to take a new direction in his
own work.
What starts out as a seemingly intellectual exercise quickly becomes something else altogether -- an evolving
personal account. Time is a basis for structural organization but it doesn't wield a tyrannical influence. The dancing
and storytelling complement one another yet also compete for attention -- intentionally and provocatively. Different
senses are triggered simultaneously by the subject matter and the dynamic interactions between the dancers as
well as the dreamlike sound score by Ted Coffey resonating from different parts of the theater.
The work is autobiographical in parts but it also relies on fiction, vocalization and silence. Its narrative arc has more
to do with an assemblage of events ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary -- and how each influences the
other.
1 Jones' writing is spare and powerful, addressing such difficult topics as the death of his father, his mother's grief and
the death of his longtime partner and artistic collaborator, Arnie Zane.
The movement reinterprets these brief flashes of memory or insight but rarely reacts to them directly. Each dancer
adds a vital energy that enlivens the words and affirms the power of being present in every moment. Interplay of
light and darkness is also important, suggesting an emotional landscape defined by the extremes of experience. It is
through the perspectives of others we often find something familiar, fulfilling and true. Something we couldn't have
seen otherwise. Jones delivers an opportunity for such reflection with "Story/Time."
2 February 6, 2011
Back to the Black Box: Bill T. Jones
On Reprising His Roots
By Kris Wilton
Bill T. Jones has a long history of pushing envelopes and challenging audiences. In the 1970s, when he was getting his
start in New York's downtown dance scene, it was by the pioneering way he - a long, strong, six-foot-one African-American
man - partnered with his lover and collaborator Arnie Zane, a five-foot-four Jewish-Italian. Later, it would be by revealing
his HIV status - but refusing to serve as a poster boy for the sweeping epidemic - and still later for exploring mortality in
works like Still/Here, which featured real people talking about death, life, and illness in a work New Yorker critic Arlene
Croce called "victim art," and flatly refused to see (but not to review). Most recently, Jones explored race and history
inFondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray, a challenging work commissioned for a festival honoring Abraham
Lincoln, and announced an impending merger with New York's Dance Theater Workshop in a new venture to be called
New York Live Arts, a move that rattled some dance-world insiders.
This weekend, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will
premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston Body
Against Body, which comprises duets originally choreographed and
performed by Jones and his late partner Arnie Zane in the 1970s
and 80s, including Continuous Replay (1978),Blauvelt
Mountain (1980), and Monkey Run Road (1979), some of which
have not been seen since. Spare, athletic, and angsty, they are
works produced in a different time, by, as Jones might say, a
different Bill T. Jones: before he and Zane would be diagnosed, on
the same day, with HIV, and Zane would die of AIDS-related illness
in 1988, before Jones's commercial successes on Broadway
with Spring Awakening, which he choreographed, and Fela, which
he co-conceived, directed, and choreographed, before the Tony
Awards for those productions, before receiving a Kennedy Center
Honor alongside Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney last
December, and before building a new life with partner Bjorn
Amelan, also the company's creative director.
Brainy, statuesque, and inspiringly vital, Jones is a joy to engage.
We spoke by phone about the premiere, his legacy, where dance is
moving, and his upcoming projects (including Superfly, the
musical).
If Body Against Body was the first work of yours a person was going to see, what would you tell them?
Wow. They've heard about Spring Awakening, they've heard about Fela, and now they're going to go and see two guys
pushing a box around on the floor and talking to each other and repeating rudimentary gestures over about 50 minutes?
Well, I think you should tell them that they're seeing seminal works from a person who is now in a second or third phase
of his career and that this could be an evening that explains how artists truly develop and evolve. They should come
knowing that they're only going to see a facet of who this man is. And it behooves them to give themselves to it, learn what
they can, and then compare it to something like the Lincoln project, which is a very big, public-spectacle work, and then
understand how difficult it is to sum up what an artist does in one piece. Also, I'd tell them to watch themselves watching
this work and ask themselves, What do you think these young guys were being fed on at that time: literally, culturally,
philosophically? What were they trying to express, what were they obsessed with? That's a lot. But I think that would be a
fair way for a person to come.
What is it like to return to these pieces 30 years later, when so much has happened to you, and you've
shifted your focus so much from what you were doing at the time?
You mean that I've grown? That life has not stood still? It's like asking a person about their youth, in a way. When we were
reprising Blauvelt Mountain maybe 10, 11 years ago, I was worrying whether a new generation of dancers could do work
that was so intimate to my relationship with my companion, and Deborah Jowitt, the Village Voice dance critic said to me,
"Bill, get out of the way of the work." That was kind of a zen moment - a zen slap, if you will. I was being extremely selfconcerned, and not thinking of the work as independent of my own life or career. I feel in some ways that I've gotten over
that hurdle now, but there's also a bit of a sadness that comes with it. It used to be, in some ways, the language of our love,
between me and Arnie Zane. Of all the billions of people on the planet, he was the only other person who knew that part.
Now other people know it. That is a wonderful thing. But it also says that the initial conversation is no more.
I keep thinking about the Marina Abramovic
retrospective at MoMA last year, where they
took these intense, passionate, powerful,
dangerous, sometimes scary performances that
she had done alone or with her lover, Ulay, and
reprised them with these mostly very young,
very beautiful dancers and performers, and
how the pieces were really very different...
Well yes, I know exactly what you're getting at. That is
the lesson that time and experience teaches us, again
and again: that if your work is truly made for the world
-- and Arnie and I certainly wanted our work made for
the world -- there will come a time when the work must
have a life independent of yourself. This raises
questions about your ability to communicate intention,
about your sincere ability to see the work, or hear the work speak to you. Sometimes the work is telling you, "Look at me, I
can be this. I can be this, too. I am not only what you think I am. I am something else."
How did you select which dancers would perform which pieces?
That's much more difficult. When we were re-doing Blauvelt for the first time, I thought our body types - Arnie Zane was
5'4", I'm 6'1" - were essential to the problems of leverage and power sharing in the work, so we need to find a short man
and a tall man. But that seemed kind of tone deaf to the fact that our company now had women, so I tried to ignore gender
and just find the people in the company who could remember the instructions, which are quite complicated. Who can do
it? Who can handle it intellectually? Who can handle it physically?
I have now decided a couple of things. I could be wrong, but I don't think it works between two women. Two men don't
necessarily guarantee that it works either. I am lucky enough to have a couple in the company, Jennifer Nugent and Paul
Matteson, who have a close relationship to the ethos that informed Arnie and I. They understand the tone of the piece, the
way the partnering and athleticism has to work. She is extremely strong and very androgynous looking; he is a handsome
and fiercely intelligent animal mover. They bring something to it.
The work I'm dying to see is Monkey
Run Road, which has not been seen
since we first started doing Blauvelt,
probably sometime in the 1980s.
Janet Wong, my rehearsal director,
has taught the combinations to a
whole host of people. There are two
men - Erick Montes, a small,
Mexican man, and Talli Jackson, a
mixed-race man, a big guy - who
have a sense of the fierceness of the
physical. The other part is there's
talking in it, there's singing in it,
there's kind of a wry and ironic
distance that we had from the
material, Arnie and I. They are
working on that.
I don't want this question to
sound impertinent, but if these
works were avant-garde when
you made them, are they still
avant-garde today?
Well, you know, people in the avantgarde are embarrassed by use of the
term now. Nobody uses it - it sounds
a little uncool, self-conscious and
art-historical. And it tends to place
the practitioner in a kind of a box, a
place that doesn't allow you to get
your roots down in the moment. But
the works are still challenging, and
when people applaud at the end of a
piece like Blauvelt, they have been
on a journey with you; it's like watching a long-distance race, and they're wondering if you'll make it. It's challenging, and
it's not for everybody. And if that's the definition of avant-garde, then I suppose they are.
Your career has taken you everywhere from the avant-garde to Broadway. Which works do you think
have been the most radical, or challenging, or have changed the perspective of the most people?
I think Blauvelt changed a lot of people's ideas about partnering, because of the way in which Arnie and I partnered.
And Uncle Tom's Cabin was seen by many, many people - some of whom were in what you call the avant-garde, and never
thought of me as a black man who wanted to find a black voice - and the end of the piece had 52 naked people of every
shape and size and color on stage, with my fully clothed, churchgoing mother amongst them, praising god. I think there
were a lot of assumptions about the alienated, secular avant-garde being challenged in that work.
Still/Here dealt with the issues of mortality at a time obsessed with AIDS. To this day people are still confused about what
that work was. The shorthand is it was a piece about AIDS, but it was a an age-old topic about life and death and mortality
- the human condition, if you will. Most of the people who were resources for it, in the videos and so on, were not in the
dance world, and as a result, it reminded people once again of how this art form can actually participate in the public
discourse, and not just the art-journal discourse. That was pretty radical. And it's taught to this day in departments around
the country, and I dare say around the world. So take your pick.
It's not very often that you can say that dance is participating in the public discourse.
No, it isn't, and you definitely pay for it when you do, because dance is controlled by an academic and critical
establishment that has very particular notions about what is valid. But you know, that's not really how history is written,
and that's not really how the levers of culture operate.
I was watching the Kennedy Center Honors this year and thinking about how the public still has so little
access to dance. And I don't just mean physical access; I mean mental or intellectual access.
Oh, it's true. I hit the art world in the 70s, and it was supposed to be the revolution of dance; people were saying that
dance was the future. What happened to that? Why does PBS do so little dance programming anymore? How often does
one see dance programming of any description on the major networks?
And what you see is just the Nutcracker...
...And the proliferation of reality shows like So You Think You Can Dance, and Dancing With the Stars. And if a person
knows anything about the development of theatrical dance, those shows have very little to do with what we call dance. But
culture is kind of a thick-skulled creature. You can yell at it all you like, you can badger it, but you have to find other ways
to help this creature develop a taste for what you think they should be tasting.
My god, when I look at the young Internet generation thinks culture is, I'm sometimes really disheartened: they're not very
well educated, and they can be extremely conservative. What we called "the body" was this great, wonderful metaphor for
human struggle and all, I think for a lot of them the body is explained third-hand or fourth-hand, on Facebook.
Let's get back to the ICA, and your panel discussion with Karole Armitage and Elizabeth Streb, "The
Making of a Choreographer," on Feb. 5. What can we expect? I'm so excited!
Me too! What the devil is that going to be? It's about mentorship and the choreographic process, and I think you're going
to get the benefit of three people who are good talkers, who are passionate about what they do, talking about how
knowledge is passed from one generation to another. This is a very important topic. I think it's always been a point of
pride in the world of dance that one person, communicating something, showed it to someone else. It wasn't like you
wrote it down; you had to be there in that space with them. I suspect, that in a world that still has people coming to have a
communal experience, to come into a theater and watch live people on stage, it will always be that.
Why is Body Against Body premiering in Boston rather than in your home turf of New York?
They're small-scale works, and they really don't benefit from being seen on large stages, where we normally perform.
When we prepared this program, we asked partners across the country who are interested in works that have a historical
interest to them, and that, because of the rigor or the demands for an audience, may not be for a broad popular audience,
but for, let's say, a museum audience. The ICA has been distinguishing itself as being one of the most adventurous places
around the country for this sort of work, and they invited us to come and do it for them.
So what's next?
The company's new works are going in two directions. One is a work I'm calling Storytime. It started out as a way for me
to get back onstage, doing what I like to do, which is tell stories. It's inspired by John Cage's famous work Indeterminacy,
where I think he tells 90 stories in 90 minutes, with David Tudor performing chance procedures in sound terms parallel to
it. I found that so intriguing that I'm writing my own 90 stories. How will my company be integrated into that? That's
where the fun starts.
Then there's the new commercial theater work. Which right now we're beginning workshops on. It's based on a 1970s film,
set in Harlem... well, no need to be coy about it: it's Super Fly the musical.
Amazing!
I know! I'm just trying to figure out how to give it that kind of
spin that keeps it fun and entertaining. How can we take this
antihero and spin him? Maybe with the help of some A-list
songwriters - they're already getting interested in the project and with lots of dance in it. Dance that's not just do the hustle,
and do the bump, abut that really pushes the envelope the way
Fela pushed the envelope around Afrobeat dancing.
When Super Fly came out, weren't you mired in your
experimental, minimalist...
Yes! But like everyone, we were fascinated by it. You have to
realize: this is not a blaxploitation film likeShaft or Foxy Brown.
It's more like an independent art film in the vein of John
Cassavetes. It's made by a photographer, Gordon Parks Jr., and
it's extremely photographic. Yes, it has its tropes we associate
with pimps, hos, drug dealers, and all, but it also has a
wonderful score by Curtis Mayfield that was nominated for an
Academy Award that year. So there's a lot in it, and we have
some high-powered, very adventurous producers as well.
You have a lot going on.
Enough rope to hang myself with. Let's leave it there.
All photos courtesy Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
From top: Bill T. Jones; Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, by Lois
Greenfield; from Body Against Body (2); from Fondly Do We
Hope; Fervently Do We Pray (2); Super Fly movie poster
Dance review: Bill T. Jones at Wolf Trap
By Sarah Kaufman, Published: August 1
Photo by Linda Davidson/THE WASHINGTON
POST - Members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company perform as Jones reads his oneminute works at the premiere of “Story/Time.”
In his long career, Bill T. Jones has gone from experimental downtown artist to two-time Tony
winner. Bridging such different worlds makes for an uncomfortable perch, from which he must
contend with purists who question his authenticity and Broadway operators who ignore his past
30 years in the arts.
Jones is not one to ignore his own discomfort. His new work, “Story/Time,” which the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company performed at Wolf Trap on Tuesday night, seems to be a way
of reconciling his postmodern roots with his success as a showman.
Jones told the audience that “Story/Time” was a homage to John Cage, whom he dubbed a
“20th-century music man.” Jones was honoring him as a word man, however: In 1958, Cage
created a work called “Indeterminacy,” in which he sat alone onstage, reading aloud a series of
one-minute stories he’d written. This is what inspired “Story/Time.”
In a program note, Jones writes that the piece is “an opportunity for me to return to the stage in a
low-key, non-popular performance-art mode.” Channeling Cage’s eye for the quirkiness of daily
life, Jones penned a sheaf of his own one-minute stories. Using the sort of random selection that
Cage and his partner, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, favored, he chose 70 and read them
from behind a desk in his booming, velvety voice.
Unlike Cage, Jones was not alone: His nine dancers swirled around him, sometimes in a group,
sometimes not, while composer Ted Coffey performed an electronic score. Robert Wierzel’s
lighting design spotlighted Jones as a kind of rumpled deity, in a blinding white T-shirt and loose
green pants. The dancers were bathed in a softer, moonlit glow — the mute demigods to Jones’s
thundering Zeus.
1
Bjorn Amelan’s spare set design was little more than a few panels of suggestive architecture and
some simple furniture, but it conjured worlds. All in all, this was one of the most provocative and
stimulating dance events that safe, predictable Wolf Trap has hosted in recent years.
Even the weather felt perfect, with a cool breeze lending its own element of pleasure.
The subjects of Jones’s mini-narratives ranged from historical snippets (cocaine use among
railway workers and its spread through rural black communities) to first-person accounts
(ruminations on his garden in winter, with birds “fluffed and plumped against the cold”). A
digital counter loomed over his head, tallying up the passing minutes, but Jones didn’t need it to
emphasize the theme of time. That was in his stories, in the interesting, understated music —
particularly in the girlish innocence of Blossom Dearie, singing a few lines of “They Say It’s
Spring.” And in more nuanced ways, it was in the dancing.
The past, the seasons, memories of his parents and of his late partner, Zane: “Story/Time” wasn’t
just a chance for Jones to get back into the spotlight. It was a way to review his life in
manageable bits. It was an oral slideshow of wide-ranging experience, often tinged with unrest.
He recalls Zane’s death and gives us a snapshot of his vibrant, reckless life. He tells us how sex
workers taunted him on a trip overseas (meanwhile, his dancers arrange the panels into a window
frame, and pose alluringly within it). He takes us to Cunningham’s apartment, where the
venerable artist pantomimes a cat.
“What has never changed in your work over the years?” Jones remembers being asked by an
audience member one time after a Kennedy Center performance. “Doubt,” he replied. “It
burns . . . like . . . fire.”
Also unchanged was the loose-jointed, luxurious ease of his dancers. The stage was a field of
play as they chased one another around, dropping and rolling. There were some agitated solos,
occasional flashes of violence and casual virtuosic surprises — a leg thrown to the ear; a sailing,
sustained turn.
If these were moments of heaven, by the end we seemed to be angling toward hell, with the stage
in dark shadows. A dancer rolled slowly across it and smoke billowed out of his clothing, as if
his flesh were smoldering.
“You live, you learn, and you forget it all,” Jones told us his father used to say.
But the choreographer had his own coda: “You live, you learn, you forget it all . . . and then you
die.”
True story, indeed.
2
February 7, 2011
In a new era of dance, early works still resonate
Jones restages duets crafted with Zane
By Thea Singer
Bill T. Jones unadorned is a revelation.
Before his sprawling investigations of faith and multimedia extravaganzas, before his audience-baiting solos and Kennedy
Center honors, Jones was half of a duo — in life and work — that was passionate about experimentation in dance.
In the ’70s and ’80s, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, who died in 1988, crafted quasi-improvisational yet formalist duets that
grappled with the space where private meets public.
Playing off each other, they plumbed the push and pull
of identity politics, why freedom both releases and
constrains us, how presentation creates meaning.
Theirs was a repertoire of dynamics, both physical and
personal, where emotion seeped through abstraction.
Three of those early works, restaged by Jones,
comprised the world premiere “Body Against Body.’’
“Monkey Run Road’’ (1979), by Jones and Zane, is the
most nonchalant yet mind-opening of the lot. It’s
actually a dance for three: two men and a large wooden
box that the pair push around the stage, sit on in
characteristic poses, and even fall headfirst inside.
Alternating as watchers and doers, they create a series
of moving pictures to Helen Thorington’s humming,
creaking score and spoken text. Erick Montes’s hands
rise as if pulled by marionette strings, then dangle like
paws. Talli Jackson later echoes the sequence, but the
pulling is between two fists. Montes crouches, his
hands as tiny horns on his head. Jackson stretches into
a lunge arcing his sternum to the sky. The phrases
repeat and travel backward, speed up, and change direction — showing us that what we see is sometimes what we get, but
sometimes so much more. Minimalism, we realize, can have epic proportions.
“Continuous Replay’’ grew from Zane’s 1977 “Hand Dance.’’ Clad in layers, Zane slipped through variations of 45 gestures.
Jones’s restaging adds people — there are 11 — and removes clothes: Everyone starts off naked. It’s an exercise in
accumulation: people, movements, John Oswald’s music, even wardrobe accumulate as the piece progresses. Led by the
powerful Peter Chamberlin as timekeeper, the dancers start in profile upstage, travel down one side, and across the apron,
sweeping and darting and clacking their arms inside Robert Wierzel’s shafts of light.
“Blauvelt Mountain (A Fiction)’’ (1980) is a serious game of word and movement association. In this revision of the JonesZane duet, Jones casts a woman with a man. The give-and take swings from gentle (a whisper in an ear) to aggressive (a
knock upside the head). Taut barrel turns beget seat straddles beget spins on knees. The relationship intrigues, but the
dance goes on too long.
If only there had been projections of the original works against the restagings. Juxtaposing past with present would have
shown the distance Jones and dance in general have traveled and how context can change the very meaning of a work.
Photo: Talli Jackson (top) and Erick Montes perform “Monkey Run Road’’ during the world premiere of “Body Against Body’’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art. (Matthew J.
Lee/Globe Staff)
Continuous Renewal: Great Dance Soars Again in American Dance
Festival Reconstruction
By Kate Dobbs Ariail
June 16, 2011 - Durham, NC
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, led since
Zane’s death in 1988 by his partner Bill T. Jones, has long been
an American Dance Festival favorite. Jones is a rare creature: a
preternaturally powerful dancer who has become one of the
greatest, most intellectual choreographers of our time, while
maintaining his own splendidly open and direct kineticism
through his 10-member company. Jones’ rigorous mind ranges
over many topics, and he crafts his dances to suit them, so one
never knows quite what a program will offer, except that it will
include stunning dancing — chests open, arms out, heads up —
carried out by beautiful, thinking, feeling human bodies.
In the ADF’s first regular Durham Performing Arts Center
performances this season, the finale is the glorious,
wrenching D-Man in the Waters, first choreographed by Jones in 1989, not long after the death of his partner,
Arnie Zane, with whom he had developed a dance language flexible and clear enough to explore identity issues
and make social commentary without sacrificing any of the prerogatives of dance. This ADF-sponsored
reconstruction is based on the 1998 revision of the work. It is set to Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in Eflat major, Op. 20, well played by members of the Durham Symphony Orchestra.
D-Man takes place in a world in which the normal medium for breathing and moving has become watery. The
dancers are buoyed by it; submerged and buffeted; frustrated, cleansed and freed. The invisible waters separate
them, and bring them together. They dive under; they breach the surface. They become the water — the tide at
the moment when it turns, going both in and out from the shore, the waves tugging at each other from with
opposing forces. All the lifting, carrying, rescuing actions become a poignant reversal of the old litany: In the
midst of life, we are in death. Yet death the all-powerful destroyer is mocked again and again by the surging life
of dancing bodies. Death will take all the bodies, but new ones will take their places — as in this reconstruction
— and Death can never take the Dance.
Two wonderful pieces precede the intermission. The evening opens with Spent Days Out Yonder (2000), to the
andante from Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major, K 590, also played live by four members of the DSO.
The sprightly music brings out lovely rippling movements, and the foursquare arrangement of the dancers
emphasizes its uncompromising structure. Bill T. Jones makes great use of his dancers’ backs, which tend to be
remarkably wonderful to look at, and in the first part of this dance, we are treated to a trio of them. The dancers
don’t look our way — they are looking out yonder — they separate us from their vision just as much as they
conjure it for us.
The program’s middle work, Continuous Replay, would be the show-stopper for your average dance troupe, but
here is a hot warm-up for our cool plunge into the waters that will follow. Originally choreographed by Arnie
Zane in 1977, the work was revised by Bill T. Jones in 1991, and includes a haunting, delicate soundscape by
John Oswald that seems critical to the richness of the conception. A fair number of dancers take their clothes off
on stage, but few stride naked onto the stage and later add garments. Led by Erick Montes as “the clock,” the
dancers gradually form a line across the stage. They stand sideways to the proscenium, so that we may see their
profiles in Robert Wierzel’s canny lighting, and periodically turn their heads to look at us. As they build a series
of bird-like movements and gestures, still in the line, they begin to glisten with sweat, and the light picks up that
gloss, while it sculpts the shadows. Especially in the large steps and lunges with the downstage legs, the dancers
look like they were lifted from ancient Greek vase paintings, in which men and birds combine identities. Once
they break free of the line, change and interchange take over, in a rather comic perversion of Escher-like
patterning. Into the glorious nudity comes a man in black socks. Here comes a woman in a snug leotard. After a
number of tight black garments appear, flowing white ones begin to take their places. The cyclic feel of this
work is so strong that you may imagine it repeating, again and again, just out of your line of vision, long after it
has played out on stage.
This highly recommended program continues June 17-18. See sidebar for details. Also recommended is a new
film about Jones and his creative process. A Good Man premiered at the Full Frame Festival in Durham this
spring; ADF is featuring it during its International Screen Dance Festival on June 26, after which it will run on
PBS in the fall. Taken together, this concert and the film offer an unusual opportunity to delve into a great
living artist’s oeuvre — past, present and future possible.
Arts&LEISURE
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2009
Bill T. Jones
Salutes
His Friend
Lincoln
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
B
ILL T. JONES is fond of saying that when he was growing up, Abraham
Lincoln was the one white man he was allowed to love unconditionally.
Sometimes he includes John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert as
well.
It’s a catchy sound bite, the sort that comes in handy for people who often find
themselves in the spotlight. And it has served Mr. Jones well over the last two years, as
he has undertaken one of the most ambitious and challenging projects of an ambitious
and challenging career: a commission by the Ravinia Festival in Illinois to create a
dance-theater work celebrating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.
But stop to consider, given the context, the full import of that line, uttered by
this 57-year-old black man. Born to migrant farmworkers in the South, he rose to
become one of the most prominent and provocative American choreographers of his
generation, a scarred veteran of the culture wars and a Tony Award winner for his
work on “Spring Awakening.” “Fela!,” his acclaimed Off Broadway musical about
the Nigerian composer and musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti — which he directed and
choreographed — opens Nov. 23 on Broadway.
For someone so preoccupied by politics and history, the Lincoln commission
represented an enormous — and risky — opportunity, one Mr. Jones at first declined
because his company doesn’t take on projects with mandated themes. “I feel my entire
artistic life is flying at me like an asteroid belt,” he said during a final intense rehearsal
period in New York recently. “I’ve been entrusted with so much.”
It’s easy to see why his longtime collaborator and companion Bjorn G. Amelan
would describe the Lincoln piece, “Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray,”
which will have its premiere on Sept. 17 and then embark on a lengthy tour, as
weighing more heavily on Mr. Jones’s shoulders than any work he can remember.
And he has created it during a remarkable time, when the United States has been in
the throes of another historic campaign and presidency, two wars and an economic
collapse: all echoes keenly felt by Mr. Jones, never an artist to lock himself in the
studio.
A hard-staring, chiseled man who favors an elegant speaking style, even in
grueling rehearsal days, Mr. Jones described the country as fractured by much more
insidious and ambiguous conflicts than the divisions during Lincoln’s time.
“Who are the good guys and the bad?” he asked, adding that one note he was trying
to sound in the piece was ambivalence. “Is it a war? I just think there’s a mess.”
Almost two years earlier, while beginning to immerse himself in what would come
to be about 15 Lincoln books and half as many documentaries, he spoke of being
afraid of the immense task. “I feel Abraham Lincoln is a kind of spirit that inhabits a
ghost world called Lincoln World on the planet of Kitsch,” he said, laughing. “He’s a
real spirit, but I have to go find him.”
By October 2008, with Barack Obama’s presidency looking likely and Mr. Jones
intent on using the Civil War era as a mirror for today’s world while avoiding heavyhanded parallels, the task was no longer abstract. He described himself as “trying to
turn myself inside out to make Lincoln’s legacy be about what I have always felt it
was about: something about human rights, and something about a politician who truly
jumps head and shoulders above the discourse of his time.”
Walking a fine line between formalism and storytelling, Mr. Jones has incorporated
video by his associate artistic director, Janet Wong, and a score by Jerome Begin,
Christopher Antonio William Lancaster and George Lewis Jr. that layers folk songs
and classical music from Lincoln’s day with original compositions. His movement,
created by the dancers and edited by Mr. Jones and Ms. Wong, is set against these
elements and a script that draws on Lincoln, Walt Whitman and the biographies of Mr.
Jones and his performers.
“He has his doubts about a government of the people, by the people, for the
people, but he keeps it to himself,” reads the biography of a man born in 1952 (Mr.
Jones’s name is not used, but the parallels are obvious), recited onstage by the actor
Jamyl Dobson. “He is surprised that he never stops believing in great men, though he
keeps it to himself.”
The performers move through these loaded words amid Mr. Amelan’s imposing
set of movable white columns and sheer oval scrim that sometimes encloses the stage.
Executing roiling phrases that resolve into sweeping tableaus or fragment and scatter,
the dancers slip in and out of character. Layers of meaning cohere and then complicate
themselves, playing a tug of war between accessibility and abstraction. “I wanted
someone iconoclastic, someone a little dangerous,” said Welz Kauffman, Ravinia’s
president, explaining his decision to offer Mr. Jones the centerpiece of Ravinia, a
major dance and music festival near Chicago. “I wanted someone I could share with
my Ravinia audience in a spectacular way. He’s got a political bent, which I wanted.”
Nigel Redden, the director of Lincoln Center Festival and a longtime admirer, is
presenting the work in 2010. “Bill has always been politically engaged in an oblique
way,” he said. “He spoke about it in a way that made me sit up and take notice.” The
festival is now a co-commissioner.
Born in Bunnell, Fla., Mr. Jones was the 10th of 12 children. He burst on to the
contemporary New York dance scene in the 1970s with his partner, Arnie Zane. Mr.
Zane died in 1988, part of a generation of artists lost to AIDS. But Mr. Jones, though
H.I.V.-positive, is healthy, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, with a
current budget of $2.6 million, has endured for more than 25 years, quite a milestone
in the economically fragile dance world.
Continued on Page 5
TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bill T. Jones during a rehearsal break: “I want to participate in the world of ideas.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2009
5
DANCE
Bill T. Jones Salutes His Friend Lincoln
TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
From Page 1
As part of an openly gay biracial
couple, and as an artist unafraid
to tackle big, thorny subjects, he
endured his share of firestorms. The
most famous came in 1995, when
Arlene Croce, then The New Yorker’s
revered, powerful dance critic,
labeled “Still/Here,” a work about
people with terminal illnesses, as
unreviewable “victim art” and chose
to write about it without seeing it.
But times have changed. The
world seems little by little to be
catching up to the purposeful,
matter-of-fact diversity that has long
characterized the company (though
such integration is still scarce in
the dance world). These days those
people who recognize his name are as
likely to associate it with the image
of him dancing down the aisles at the
2007 Tonys after winning his award
for “Spring Awakening.” It doesn’t
get more mainstream than that for
American dance, yet he still sparks
strong reactions.
“I think it’s the residue of the
culture wars, and people who needed
a poster boy, they got one,” Mr. Jones
said. He marveled that some people
still believe they can keep art walled
off from politics. “Well, come on,
they’re not separate anymore. I didn’t
let that genie out of the bottle.”
Mr. Kauffman spoke of needing
an artist who would complicate “the
saccharine part” of “Father Abraham”
and drew a comparison between Mr.
Jones and Leonard Bernstein: “He
was always called a fake. But boy, do
we miss him today — the derring-do,
the controversy.”
Yet the idea of Father Abraham,
greeted as a conquering hero by freed
slaves in Richmond, Va., is profoundly
moving for Mr. Jones, even as he
acknowledges its sentimentality.
And during the company’s residency
at Ravinia this May, when Mr.
Kauffman got his first real look
at an early draft of “Fondly Do
We Hope ...” at a showing for
local schoolchildren, his initial
stir-the-pot motivation had
given way to emotions that
left him close to tears.
“I was sitting with
a bunch of rowdy
guys, and at a
certain moment
they went
RUSSELL JENKINS/RAVINIA FESTIVAL
absolutely silent, just transfixed,” he
said. “To see it up on its feet is more
overwhelming than I thought it would
be.”
Mr. Jones and his collaborators
could relate to the overwhelming
part. The residency had been mentally
draining and physically demanding,
with cold weather making the long
days and nights of rehearsal in the
open-air Pavilion theater a painful
test of endurance. The performers
congregated around heaters while
not onstage. Everyone else huddled
under blankets and as many layers of
Bill T. Jones, center at
top, rehearsing with his
company in New York;
below that, the dancers
(clockwise from left)
Antonio Brown, Erick
Montes and LaMichael
Leonard working on the
Lincoln Piece in Illinois.
Above, Mr.. Jones doing
research at the Chicago
History Museum, and
below, in 1983 with his
partner, Arnie Zane.
RUSSELL JENKINS/RAVINIA FESTIVAL
clothing as they could find. Emotions
ran high, and as the amount of work
still to be done seemed to increase, Mr.
Jones’s demeanor grew testy at times.
He barked commands and stalked up
aisles, and his words were not always
kind.
“He has a way of pushing you,”
said Paul Matteson, the dancer given
the hefty task of portraying Lincoln.
“He does it with the younger dancers,
getting them to do something that’s
more than they know. It sometimes
feels a little dangerous or cutting or
ONLINE: MORE BILL T. JONES
Related articles, news and reviews:
nytimes.com/dance
TOM CARAVAGLIA
inappropriate, but I kind of love that
old-school thing about him.”
Mr. Jones acknowledged his temper
but didn’t apologize for it. “I know
there’s a certain irateness in me,” he
said. “But I am trying to do my job. I
don’t have to be cuddly.”
In making his way toward the
Ravinia commission, he had already
created two less ambitious Lincoln
works: “Serenade/The Proposition,”
a nuanced rumination on history that
had its premiere at the 2008 American
Dance Festival, and “100 Migrations,”
a community piece seen later that year
at the University of Virginia. With
“Fondly Do We Hope...” he wanted
to make something more concretely
about Lincoln without falling into
biopic territory, a piece that would
serve as both a monument to Lincoln’s
legacy and a personal statement by Mr.
Jones.
“Bill was always a storyteller,”
Ms. Wong said. “He has his heart on
his sleeve.”
Throughout the making of “Fondly
Do We Hope ...” Mr. Jones struggled
with the question of audience: for
whom is he creating this work, which
bears the added responsibility of being
a commission?
“I’ve been looking at Tyler Perry,”
he said last month, referring to the
popular black filmmaker. “I envy him.
He understands very clearly who his
audience is.”
Like many artists who, as he put it,
refused “the orthodoxy of what a black
artist is,” Mr. Jones has sometimes felt
caught in limbo between his roots and
his ambitions.
“I suppose maybe I could use ‘great
music’ and make well-constructed
dance visualizations of it,” he said.
“And that will be satisfying to many
people. But it’s not the way I want
dance. I want dance to be scragglier
than that. I want to participate in the
world of ideas.”
In May, during a visit to the
Chicago History Museum, Mr. Jones
was mostly quiet walking around the
various Lincoln artifacts. At one point
he spent several minutes staring at a
bust of the man he has spent the past
two years with. At another he put his
foot in a cast of Lincoln’s foot, based
on one of the president’s moccasins. It
fit pretty well.
“This is a commission, and it’s a
bicentennial piece,” he had said the
day before, ticking off a list of famous
choreographers Ravinia could have
asked.
Then he had paused, as if to
emphasize his next words, or let them
sink in. “They asked me.”
Jones peaks with 'Hope'
September 19, 2009
BY HEDY WEISS Dance Critic/[email protected]
At once haunted and haunting, "Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray" -- Bill T. Jones'
epic 90-minute meditation on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, and on the enduring issues of war
and race -- is the work of a mature artist at the peak of his powers. I confess I've
sometimes thought of Jones as something of a charlatan -- more seductive in his talk than in the work he
produced. But here, in a seamless and consistently breathtaking collage of language, movement, music,
light, imagery, meaning and emotion, he has created a thing of immense beauty and consequence.
And its world premiere at the Ravinia Festival on Thursday, the start of a national tour, is a
momentous achievement both for the army of artists engaged in its realization and for Ravinia,
which commissioned the piece in honor of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. It begins with an
explosion -- signifying the start of the Civil War, perhaps, or the assassination of the 16th president -followed by the mournful sound of Lincoln's funeral train. But this is no literal documentary. It is a
fiercely poetic evocation of all things black, white and decidedly gray,
and it just happened to have arrived onstage a day after this country once again was plunged into a
heated debate about race, politics and rage.
Not by chance are there ghostly figures here --shadowy, animated reversals of color, including an iconic
figure in a stovepipe hat and another man in a pork pie hat much like the one Jones wears. And not by
chance does a magisterial black man, actor Jamyl Dobson, appear as the most recognizable Lincoln in
the piece, signifying the way Jones (whose superb company of dancers is broadly multiracial) has
upended many aspects of the discussion here.
The layers of complexity are too many and too intricately woven to detail in full. Suffice it to say
that Lincoln's words, Walt Whitman's poetry, Jones' sly musings and traditional songs are all
woven into a stunningly original score by virtuosos Jerome Begin, George Lewis Jr., and
Christopher Antonio Willian Lancaster (aided by vocalist Clarissa Sinceno).
Bjorn Amelan's inspired set consists of a "white house" shaped by gauzy curtains, with a series
of sleek white classical columns suggesting both the Lincoln Memorial and a slave market
auction block, and finally forming the eerie halls through which a half-mad Mary Todd Lincoln
(the wonderfully intense Asli Bulbul) wanders, while the tiny, expressive dancer I-Ling Liu
moves through a Martha Graham-like solo suggesting Mary's agony.
Jennifer Nugent, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Paul Matteson, Antonio Brown, Peter Chamberlin, Talli
Jackson, LaMichael Leonard Jr. and Erick Montes are the ever-morphing characters in this piece, which
was created in collaboration with Janet Wong (whose video design is extraordinary, and worked
particularly well at Ravinia, where this season's newly installed screens were deployed to maximum
effect). They have built a most united artistic house.
Jeudi 9 septembre 2010
“Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray”, un spectacle épuré visuellement. RUSSEL JENKINS
Les vies de Bill T. Jones
New York Envoyée special
Reportage Tête chercheuse, le chorégraphe noir américain se laisse surprendre par l’“entertainment”
Le millésime 2010 est celui de Bill T. Jones. En plein mois de juillet, alors que les grandes compagnies de
danse comme le New York City Ballet ou l'Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater sont " off " jusqu'en
septembre, le chorégraphe noir américain,pantalon vert et tee-shirt blanc, travaille. Au Rose Theater de New
York, il présente sa nouvelle pièce, Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray (Tendrement nous espérons...
Ardemment nous prions), inspirée par la vie d'Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), président des Etats-Unis dont le
nom est associé à la guerre de Sécession et à l'abolition de l'esclavage.
A la fin de la représentation, Bill T. Jones descend une dizaine de " blocks " sur Broadway, pour aller saluer les
danseurs et chanteurs de son spectacle Fela. Trois Tony Awards, dont un pour sa mise en scène, des critiques
dithyrambiques dans les médias: toute la scène new-yorkaise, du producteur hip-hop Jay-Z jusqu'au comédien
Will Smith, ovationne le chorégraphe pour cette comédie musicale, hommage au musicien nigérian Fela
Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997) (Le Monde du 14 août).
Bill T. Jones rayonne. A 58 ans, une nouvelle vie commence. Chorégraphe contemporain, "avant-garde" selon
sa proper définition, le voilà plébiscité par le grand public. " Il y a dix ans, ce type de show m'aurait déplu,
admet-il. Aujourd'hui, j'adore. Je suis heureux de voir ces spectateurs qui ne me connaissaient pas découvrir
mon travail et avoir du plaisir. Je crois avoir retrouvé le sens de ce que j'étais profondément.”
Bill T. Jones rayonne. Bill T. Jones s'agace. C'est comme ça depuis toujours. Aussi rapide à prendre la mouche colère memorable contre les spectateurs qui n'appréciaient pas son spectacle sur Jacques Brel au Festival
d'Avignon en 1996 - qu'à vous serrer dans ses bras. Il refuse d'évoquer le passé, celui des années 1990 et de la
lutte contre le sida. Pourtant, il s'est longtemps présenté comme " noir, homosexuel, séropositif " pour affronter
les tabous.
Avec Arnie Zane, son compagnon, rencontré en 1971, il fonde une compagnie. Zane meurt du sida en 1988. "
J'ai parlé du sida parce qu'on me le demandait. On m'a enfermé là-dedans. Une pièce comme Still Here (1994),
conçue avec des malades en phase terminale, ne parle pas de ça, elle évoque la vie et la mort. Je me revendique
toujours comme un "artiste engagé", mais cela prend un autre ton aujourd'hui. Il faut advancer.”
Fela et Abraham Lincoln sont donc les héros du moment. Il est passionnant de télescoper les destins du " black
president " de Lagos, comme s'était baptisé Fela, qui dénonça au début des années 1960 la corruption du régime
au Nigeria et le destin chahuté de Lincoln.
Entre texte virulent, musique live puissante et danse sculpturale, Jones évoque le premier président des EtatsUnis antiesclavagiste, qui mourut assassiné. Danse-manifeste, théâtre d'idées, comme le revendique Jones.
Identité afro-américaine
L'histoire des Noirs américains est une musique que Bill T. Jones connaît (il est un fabuleux interprète de
gospel). Toutes les vies du chorégraphe composent une saga de l'identité afro-américaine, depuis sa naissance
dans une famille d'ouvriers agricoles de douze enfants jusqu'à son succès avec Fela.
L'une de ses ancêtres, Matt Lee, était " guérisseuse, née d'une famille d'esclaves dans les années 1860 ", comme
il le raconte dans sa biographie, Dernière nuit sur Terre (Ed. Actes Sud). Estelle, la mère, a eu douze enfants
avec deux maris différents. Elle sera sur le plateau auprès de son fils pour Last Supper at the Uncle's Tom Cabin
(1990), harangue sur l'esclavage, le racisme, la religion et les valeurs démocratiques de l'Amérique.
Le père de Bill T . , Gus Jones, émigra de la Floride au nord des Etats-Unis pour tenir une petite entreprise
d'ouvriers itinérants. Enfant, Bill T. Jones travailla dans les champs. Quelques années plus tard, en 1971, il
intègre l'université, s'inscrit en section athlétisme et découvre les cours de théâtre. Puis la danse. Il avale tout : le
classique, le contemporain, la danse moderne et le style afro-caribéen. Ce qui explique son style si particulier,
fusion de pas classiques, d'envolées jazz, auréolée d'une élégance très swing.
Bill T. Jones affirme plus que jamais son désir d'un théâtre total. Sa compagnie rassemble des danseurs, des
musiciens et des acteurs. Cette année, pour la première fois de sa carrière, les comptes financiers sont au beau
fixe. " C'est incroyable en période de crise mais formidable, souligne-t-il. Je rêve d'installer la compagnie dans
un studio à elle dans Harlem. Je réfléchis aussi sur la meilleure manière de poursuivre ce travail de comédie
musicale, tout en maintenant une recherche plus pointue. Créer une sorte de troupe-laboratoire, pourquoi pas ?
" Encore une nouvelle vie pour Bill T. Jones.
Bill T. Jones dances in a fascinating ‘American Masters’
DAVID HINCKLEY
Thursday, November 10, 2011
You could say that choreographer
Bill T. Jones crafting a tribute to
Abraham Lincoln is a good man
honoring a good man.
You could also say it adds up to a
good TV show.
That’s more of a feat than it might
sound in the new “American
Masters” production called “Bill T.
Jones,” which debuts Friday night
at 9.
The potential glitch is that Jones, a
two-time Tony winner and
Kennedy Center honoree, works in
an avant-garde area of modern
dance.
That means his work is a little less
accessible to civilians than, say,
tap dancing or fox trots.
If you’re not on his wavelength, a lot of his dances and choreography won’t by themselves, frankly, make much
sense.
This point is reinforced by a scene in which he is talking with his composer, the man who will write the music
that accompanies Jones’ dance/theater work.
To explain what he wants, Jones says, “He. They. Us. He. They. Us.”
You can see where, outside his creative circle, that might not seem to explain exactly what he wants.
Somehow, though, it doesn’t matter. We may not understand each note or each move, but watching Jones at
work becomes fascinating.
As we see him working to create the Lincoln piece, titled “Fondly Do We Hope. ... Fervently Do We Pray,” he
explains where he wants each piece of the tribute to fit.
In a broader sense, watching Jones work isn’t completely different from watching a carpenter build a house or
watching a chef bake a cake.
Appreciating the process doesn’t require understanding all the architecture. When Jones and a dancer clash
over the scope of her role, and he patiently explains that her part will be more powerful if she remains more
passive and quiet, anyone who has ever held a job will understand how both sides feel.
Jones also explains how he came to the Lincoln piece, which was commissioned for the 200th anniversary by
the Ravinia Festival. That’s held in Illinois, though much of the footage for the TV production was shot at
rehearsals on 42nd St.
Lincoln was a boyhood hero, says Jones, and the power of his actions, notably emancipation, continues to
overshadow what Jones later learns about Lincoln’s less-remembered comments on the inherent inferiority of
the black race.
The Lincoln who emerges in “Fondly,” then, also has feet of clay and deep conflicts. Accordingly, Jones says
during auditions for the Lincoln role that he wants “a man, not a boy ... someone who knows something of
Lincoln’s sorrow.”
Jones burns with intensity, and that also helps turn this into far more than a documentary about a moderndance casting call.
The viewer doesn’t have to fall in love with this work, which debuted at Ravinia in 2009, to come away thinking
the title of this production is correct. Bill T. Jones does seem to be a good man.
December 11, 2011|By Irene Lacher, Special to the Los Angeles Times
The Sunday Conversation: With Bill T. Jones
Choreographer Bill T. Jones, who won a Tony Award for 'Fela!,' discusses his influences, West
African dance and diverse theater audiences.
Bill T. Jones won his second Tony Award for choreographing "Fela!," a musical about the late Nigerian
Afrobeat singer, composer and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Jones, 59, also cowrote the book and
directed the high-energy show about the government's crackdown on his commune. "Fela!" comes to the
Ahmanson Theatre on Tuesday and runs through Jan. 22, 2012.
Were you familiar with Fela's music before this project?
Yes, I was. Fela was very important to a lot of us in the '70s, maybe not as important as Bob Marley. I studied
African dancing at the university in 1970, '71, and I was doing West African and African-Caribbean dance and
modern dance taught by a wonderful dancer, Percival Borde, who was married to the great dancer and historian,
Pearl Primus. It was all folklorico, so when I heard Fela's music, it was a revelation that this was African music.
We were listening and improvising to some of his albums, but it wasn't until soon to be 10 years ago that
[producer] Stephen Hendel came to me through a mutual friend and asked if I would consider doing the show.
Then I began to go deeper into his music again.
Why do you call him "a sacred monster"?
Because he is so flawed. There's something megalomaniacal about him. But he makes art as not only something
you consume and have a good time with, but art that has aspirations of speaking to power and art that speaks for
people who can't speak for themselves. There's something very inspirational in his music, and I think that makes
him sacred.
Music with political purpose was more common in those days. Do you agree?
I think at any one time there are always socially engaged artists. Some are more expressive than others. Some
are caught in the cross hairs of history like Fela was, and he takes on a big responsibility and that's why he was
arrested so many times, and that's why he was so often vilified and pursued by the authorities. You have to
realize that very few rock musicians go so far as to teach themselves as Fela did another language. He had to
learn to speak pidgin English. He had to learn to speak to the people in the street that he wanted to make music
for. Therefore that gave him considerable credibility and to this day, in Nigeria, he's kind of a national hero.
Why wasn't his music better known here before this show?
I'm not a musicologist, but people involved in the world music movement in the '80s knew about Fela. Fela did
not see himself as a pop musician. He saw himself as a serious composer and his first love was jazz. Already
that's going to be a problem for the masses of people in pop music. It was the kind of music that would appeal
to people who know something about jazz music, who know something about modern music.
And I think there was something about his politics that was alien to Americans. They didn't know much about
the post-colonial struggle in Africa. I don't believe that the majority of Americans were very interested. I think
all those things make his music urgent, when you understand how he was already critiquing globalization,
specifically what was the last gasp of colonialism in Africa and trying to speak first and foremost to people in
Africa about it. The rest of us heard dance music only.
And one of the things we had to do in our show was to make the music accessible, we had to choose the right
songs. And we had to translate the lyrics in some regards and sometimes write new lyrics that would express
these very colloquial phrases he was using in the original.
One critic said "the pelvis is the star of West African dance." Can you explain that?
That's true to a point. The whole body is played like a percussion instrument in African dance. We were
inspired by the way Fela's women moved when you see them in videotapes. They've taken folkloric movements
and done their gloss on them. There's a particular kind of spiraling movement in the pelvis that the women
dancers do on Fela's stage ad nauseum. It's very provocative and very elegant at the same time. It's a sort of
rippling, spiraling movement that goes down and goes up and goes down and goes up completely in sync with
the music. On our stage, it's impressed a lot of people when they see them moving in this way and it's not
designed to be hootchy-kootchy. Yes, they are fertility goddesses and yes, they're go-go dancers. But by the
same token in the same Afrika Shrine [where Kuti performed], they did a Yoruba ceremony on certain nights of
the week, complete with sacrificing a chicken.
How do you translate vernacular dance into theater?
On our stage I introduced men. The only man onstage [originally] was Fela; for the most part all the other
dancers were women. This is not a folkloric concert. [Those styles] are blended with my aesthetic of modern
dance, so this is very much a work of the imagination, an interpretation of Fela's concerts. The men bring a
certain kind of brio and energy to it that you don't see in the women onstage.
Trailers available for viewing:
Story/Time
http://vimeo.com/34467076
Play and Play: An evening of movement and music
http://vimeo.com/28473964
Body Against Body
http://vimeo.com/26695351
For booking information, please contact your IMG Artists booking representative:
US Representation
Carnegie Hall Tower
152 W 57th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019
(p) 212-994-3500
(f) 212-994-3550
[email protected]
www.imgartists.com
European Representation
Gillian Newson
DanceArts UK, London Office
(p) +44 20 7622 8549
(f) +44 77 6816 6381
[email protected]
skype gilliannewson
Company Contact
Jean Davidson, Executive Director
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
(p) 212-691-6500 ext.201
(f) 212-633-1974
[email protected]
www.newyorklivearts.org
about us
New York Live Arts offers a robust framework in support of the
nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches
to producing, presenting and educating.
We are expanding the cultural footprint for movement-based artists and performance. New York
Live Arts is eager to participate in the artistic and social fabric of New York and the world beyond.
Bill T. Jones,
–
Executive Artistic Director
In service of its mission, New York Live Arts:
• Presents a world-class season of diverse artists noteworthy for their conceptual rigor and
formal experimentation.
• Provides unparalleled support for the creation of new work to artists at all stages of their
careers, with a particular focus on mid-career artists.
• Offers audiences and students meaningful opportunities to engage with art, artists and
one another.
New York Live Arts presents inspired artists, at all stages in their careers, offering audiences a
bracingly provocative opportunity to engage with some of the most compelling ideas of our time.
– Carla Peterson, Artistic Director
Signature programs include:
• The Presenting Season supports the work of over 50 highly individual emerging,
mid-career and established artists offering audiences access to works notable for their
conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and active engagement with aesthetic,
political and social concerns.
• Resident Commissioned Artist receives a competitive salary, health benefits, a
two- year creative residency and a commission for a new work to premiere at New
York Live Arts, with possible tour support to follow.
• DTW Commissioning Fund supports the creation of new work from some of the
most forward-thinking artists working today.
• Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company tours worldwide and has performed in
over 200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent and is recognized as
one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world.
• Fresh Tracks identifies six early career artists to receive comprehensive
performance, mentorship and residency support.
• Studio Series provides 100 hours of creative residency time, stipends, and
work-in-process showings to emerging and mid-career artists.
• Shared Practice workshops allow season artists to share their physical and
creative practices and processes.
• The Suitcase Fund connects a global network of artists to promote cultural
exchange and discourse around performance-based practices.
• Artist-led education and engagement programs develop socially aware
citizens and artists capable of questioning deeply and making meaningful
contributions to the field, society and world.
New York Live Arts Leadership
Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director
Jean Davidson, Chief Executive Officer
Carla Peterson, Artistic Director
219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 | 212.691.6500
Photo: Ian Douglas
newyorklivearts.org
New York Live Arts was founded in 2011 by a merger of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop.
We respect the past and the 75 years of combined knowledge and expertise that New York Live Arts is founded on, and we are wild
about the future. – Bill T. Jones
About Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Over the past 30 years the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through
the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born
of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the
most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire
worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries on every major continent. The repertory of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance
Company is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft and
includes musically-driven works as well as works using a variety of texts. Some of its most celebrated creations are evening
length works including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990, Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994, Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early… Visibility Was Poor (1996,
Hancher Auditorium,Iowa City, IA); You Walk? (2000, European Capital of Culture 2000,Bolgna, Italy); Blind Date (2006,
Peak Performances at Montclair State University); Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); and Fondly Do We
Hope… Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL). The ongoing, site-specific, Another Evening was last
performed in its seventh incarnation as Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia).
About Dance Theater Workshop
Founded in 1965 Dance Theater Workshop was a stalwart supporter of over 2,500 artists and companies. Originally founded
as an artist collective, the organization was one of the few organizations in New York that provided direct support to artists
through commissions and performance fees, international research and travel subsidies, rehearsal space and rental subsidies
and touring support. With a record of over 45 years of innovation and service, Dance Theater Workshop furthered the
development of dance and performance through original programming that addressed the ever-shifting needs of artists
and audience members alike. Among the hundreds of other visionaries who found an early artistic home at Dance Theater
Workshop are artists such as Johanna Boyce, Ronald K. Brown, Donald Byrd, Ann Carlson, H.T. Chen, Tina Croll, David
Dorfman, Molissa Fenley, Whoopi Goldberg, David Gordon, Bill Irwin, John Jasperse, Bill T. Jones, Keely Garfield, Ralph Lemon,
Susan Marshall, Bebe Miller, Mark Morris, Michael Moschen, David Neumann, Tere O’Connor, Pepón Osorio, Annie B Parson and
Paul Lazar, David Parsons, Stephen Petronio, Lenny Pickett, Susan Rethorst, Stephanie Skura, Merián Soto and Reggie Wilson.
219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 | 212.691.6500
newyorklivearts.org