 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.
Which are several of the multiple reasons to celebrate the Bill
T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s upcoming 20th Anniversary,
a birthday that fittingly begins at The Kitchen, September 9–20,
where Jones and Arnie Zane first launched their careers. The anniversary
also takes the 10-member company around the world with stops in
major venues in major cities including a February 3–7 engagement
at BAM, where Jones and Zane received their first large-scale commission.
Lead Corporate Sponsorship for the 20th Anniversary season is provided
by Altria Group, Inc. with Major Corporate Sponsorship from JP Morgan
Chase.
It was the duet and solo work that both Jones and Zane began showing
at The Kitchen in 1979 that first drew public and critical attention
to this unlikely pair of artists. So it is appropriate that the
work that helped launch their career and shape their future artistic
identity should be recalled, and its 20th Anniversary begin at The
Kitchen. The season will feature the revival of "Blauvelt Mountain
(A Fiction)," one of the first works Jones and Zane jointly
created. Premiered in 1980 and winner of the German Dance Prize
that year, the dance’s unorthodox partnering and integration
of text suggest some of the artistic explorations to come. Also
at The Kitchen will be "Duet x 2." Created in 1982, it
is a two-part duet performed by two sets of partners and marked
by a demanding athletic virtuosity, power, surprising shapes and
changing relationships. 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. "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. Jones
will introduce each evening.
After dates in Iowa City, IA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; Madrid, Spain;
Lille, France; and Gainesville, FL, the 20th Anniversary celebration
will continue in New York with a week of performances, February
3–7, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the company will
present two programs of large scale works including the New York
premiere of "Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger,"
"Another Another History of Collage" and "The Phantom
Project: Still/Here Looking On." 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, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger"
reflects upon the story’s questions about race, power and
human relationships rather than simply illustrating the written
story.
Another highlight of the BAM season will be "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. A colorful, irreverent and idiosyncratic celebration
of the diversity of the world, "Another Another History of
Collage," the final collaboration between Zane and Jones (1988),
gleefully blurs the boundaries between "High" and "Low"
art.
The BAM season will include Zane’s 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." Add to that, Jones’s 1993 "There
Were…," a reworking of Jones’s 1993 "There
Were So Many," a work for ten dancers whose dramatic changes
in movement tempo and regal bearing suggest "a pastoral ritual."
The music is by John Cage. And finally, there is the New York premiere,
"Chaconne," a solo for Jones set to Bach’s Chaconne
from the "Partita in D-minor" for solo violin, which uses
a video created by Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar and the choreographer.
Recorded from multiple points of view, suggesting at times the solo
performer as a trio, the dance transcends and transforms the constraints
of solo performing through the live performer’s interaction
with video.
In addition to the works performed at The Kitchen and BAM, the company’s
20th Anniversary repertory will include "Power/Full,"
a quintet filled with subtle emotional shifts and set to two scores,
one a witty re-edit of a fire and brimstone televangelist preaching
by John Oswald and the other, a majestic interpretation of a Kyrie
by Laurel MacDonald.
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 (a.k.a.
"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 will receive the prestigious 2003 Dorothy and
Lillian Gish Prize in October. In addition to creating works for
his own troupe, Jones has received commissions from the 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).
Arnie Zane’s photography will be exhibited at the Paula Cooper
Gallery later this year.
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The Phantom Project-The 20th Season is funded by:
Lead Corporate Sponsor
Altria Group, Inc. is the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip
Morris International and Philip Morris USA. For nearly 50 years,
Altria Group has supported the arts as part of its commitment to
enriching communities and fostering innovation, excellence and cultural
diversity. In the last decade alone, Altria companies have awarded
nearly $130 million to arts organizations across the United States.
Additional information is available at www.altria.com/media_programs.
Major Corporate Sponsor
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is a leading global financial services
firm with assets of $803 billion and operations in more than 50
countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial
services for consumers and businesses, financial transaction processing,
investment management, private banking and private equity. A component
of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JP Morgan Chase is headquartered
in New York and serves more than 30 million consumer customers nationwide,
and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional
and government clients. Information about JP Morgan Chase is available
on the internet at www.jpmorganchase.com.
Additional support for the 20th Anniversary season is provided by
the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the
Arts, The Wallace Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Howard Gilman Foundation.
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