BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY
HEADS WEST THIS SPRING FOR MAJOR
CALIFORNIA TOUR, BEGINNING APRIL 2
TOUR HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE NEW REPERTORY,
PLUS LIVE MUSIC IN SAN FRANCISCO
Dates include: Los Angeles (April 2 & 3); Riverside (April 10);
La Jolla (April 12); and San Francisco (May 19–22)
There is Bill T. Jones,
the provocateur; there is Bill T. Jones, the social conscience;
there is Bill T. Jones, the vocalist, the dancer, the speaker, the
director, the writer, the innovator, humanist, optimist, charmer,
leader, irreverent romantic, instinctual intellectual. But most
importantly, there is Bill T. Jones, one of the leading artists
of his generation, whose work will be seen in major venues throughout
California when the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company returns
with a repertory featuring new and classic works, almost all of
which are west coast premieres. (Please see attached tour schedule.)
Performances are scheduled at the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles (April 2 & 3); UC Riverside’s
University Theater in Riverside (April 10), UC San Diego’s
Mandeville Auditorium in La Jolla (April 12) and the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts in San Francisco (May 19–22). The Company’s
San Francisco dates feature live music.
Among the tour highlights will be
the west coast premiere of “Reading, Mercy and The Artificial
Nigger.” Combining the text of Flannery O’Connor’s
disturbing short story, “The Artificial Nigger,” read
by two actors against Daniel Roumain’s radiant score, “Reading”
reflects upon the story’s questions about race, power and
human relationships rather than simply illustrating the written
story. O’Connor’s story also provides the inspiration
for Jones’s “Mercy 10 x 8 on a Circle,” set to
Beethoven’s “32 Variations on an Original Theme in C
minor.”
Another highlight is “The Phantom
Project: Still/Here Looking On,” which uses sections from
Jones’s 1994 landmark examination of mortality as the centerpiece
for a look backward and forward at the dances he has created over
the past 30 years.
The tour also features a revival of “Blauvelt Mountain (A
Fiction),” one of the first works Jones and Zane jointly created.
Premiered in 1980 and awarded the German Dance Prize that year,
the dance’s unorthodox partnering and integration of text
suggest some of the artistic explorations to come.
“Floating the Tongue,”
a solo that premiered in 1983, explores Jones’s fascination
with the tensions between the outer performance and the inner feelings
of the performer, which the dancer articulates while moving. Set
to music by John Cage, Jones’s 1993 “There Were…”
is a reworking of his 1993 “There Were So Many,” a work
for ten dancers whose dramatic changes in movement tempo and regal
bearing suggest “a pastoral ritual.”
Arnie Zane’s “Continuous
Replay,” a solo entitled “Hand Dance” when it
premiered in 1977, and later transformed into a duet for Zane and
Jones, is based on 45 hand and arm gestures that provide the framework
for a structured improvisational response from its dancers. His
1987 classic “The Gift/No God Logic,” an alternately
witty and sad quartet comprised of a trio of men and a female dancer,
set to Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.”
One of the most well-traveled troupes
in the world, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was founded
by Jones and Zane in 1982, eleven years after the two artists had
begun collaborating and working as a duo. Since that time it has
been honored with innumerable awards including several New York
Dance and Performance Awards (“Bessies”). In 1999, it
was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement
in Dance. The company has been represented in and the subject of
many documentaries, most recently “Free to Dance,” produced
by the American Dance Festival.
Celebrated world-wide as one of the
most innovative artists of his generation, Jones received the prestigious
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2003. In addition to creating
works for his own troupe, Jones has received commissions from Alvin
Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet
and the Lyon Opera Ballet, where he was also resident choreographer
for four years. He was the recipient of the 1994 MacArthur Fellowship
and the 1993 Dance Magazine Award, among others. In 2000, The Dance
Heritage Coalition named him “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure.”
His memoir, “Last Night on Earth,” was published by
Pantheon Books in 1995.
Arnie Zane (1948–1988), a native
New Yorker, began his collaboration with Jones when they met at
State University of New York at Binghamton. A prize-winning photographer
as well as a choreographer, Zane was the recipient of two awards
from the Creative Artists Public Service Program (1973 for photography
and 1981 for choreography). He was also the recipient of two Choreographic
Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1983 and 1984).
###
The Phantom Project – 20th Anniversary
Season is sponsored by:
Lead Corporate Sponsor  Major
Corporate Sponsor
 
Additional support for the 20th Anniversary Season is provided by
The Howard Gilman Foundation, Marcia & John Goldman, Suzanne
Toor Karpas & Irving D. Karpas, Jr., The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts, Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation,
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jane & Terry Semel, The Wallace Foundation
and Champagne Veuve Clicquot.
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