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Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Announces 2014-2015 Season
Highlights include the New York City Premiere of
Story/Time (35, 36, 37 & 38) at New York Live Arts;
the World Premiere of Analogy (working title) in June 2015
at Montclair State University; and more
New York, NY, July 2, 2014 – The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, New York Live Arts’ Resident
Dance Company, announced today the touring programs and productions for the 2014-2015 Season. The
Company will perform and conduct residencies in more than 11 cities in eight states over the next 12 months,
making their debut at a number of venues across the U.S. Highlights of the 2014-2015 Season include the
New York City premiere of Story/Time (35, 36, 37 & 38) November 4 – 8 and 11 – 15 on the Company’s
home stage at the New York Live Arts theater; the world premiere of Analogy (working title) in June
2015 at Montclair State University; the Company debut at Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole,
Wyoming; and more. Touring programs for the 2014-2015 season include Analogy (working title), the
Company’s newest work; Story/Time; Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music; Body Against Body;
and A Rite.
“Our 2014-2015 touring season represents the wide range of works—both new and restaged—that the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s repertory encompasses. What began more than 32 years ago as a
shared vision between me and Arnie Zane has continued today with the help of Associate Artistic Director
Janet Wong and our Creative Director Bjorn Amelan,” said Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and New York Live Arts. “During the 2014-2015 Season I look forward to
returning to the Live Arts stage to present the New York City premiere of Story/Time, as well as unveiling
our newest work, Analogy (working title), in June 2015 at Montclair State University, and continuing to
expose an array of works to new audiences around the country.”
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company kicks off their 2014-2015 Season in July with a number of
residencies in conjunction with their newest creation, Analogy (working title). From July 7 – 11 the Company
will conduct a creative residency at Montclair State University, culminating with a work-in-progress
showing on July 11 at 3:30pm. Next, the Company will make their debut at Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming, with a creative residency from July 14 – 21. The Company’s time at Dancers’ Workshop will
include an offering of master classes, open rehearsals with Q&A sessions, special events and a work-inprogress showing. The work, which will have its world premiere at Montclair State University in June
2015, is a hybrid of dance, theater and music, and takes its inspiration from both W.G. Sebald’s literature and
an oral history Jones conducted with Dora Amelan, a 94 year-old French survivor of WWII. Using the
character Ambros Adelwarth, from Sebald’s The Emigrants, Analogy (working title) explores two parallel
streams of investigation in search of equivalences including identity, duty, love, the instinct for survival and
more. Analogy (working title) is commissioned by Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ) and Cocommissioned by Dancers' Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY.
In November, the Company will return to their home stage at New York Live Arts’ theater with the New
York City premiere of Story/Time (35, 36, 37 & 38). A critically acclaimed work of riveting storytelling
and luscious movement called “a dance-theater roller coaster with surprises around every corner,” (San
Francisco Chronicle), Story/Time takes its inspiration from the legendary composer and artist John Cage’s
Indeterminacy. Featuring seventy one-minute stories interrupted by a chance musical score, the work
weaves together a collage of movement, music and Jones’ own short stories, arranged anew for each
performance. The performances at Live Arts will mark the Company’s second home season and will feature a
selection of special guest artists.
Other highlights of the 2014-2015 Season include the presentation of Story/Time at Stanford University in
January 2015 and the Los Angeles premiere of A Rite, which Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times
called “…a serious, intricate, multidirectional centennial tribute to a work of art whose spell it deepens,” at
UCLA in March 2015. Additionally, during the Company’s residency and performances of Play and Play: An
Evening of Movement and Music at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, students will perform
Continuous Replay with the Company, a work said to be “a thorough primer in Jones/Zane style: sharp
versus flowing, large versus small, straight versus angled” by The New York Times.
In September 2014, Jones’ latest book, Story/Time: The Life of an Idea, will be released by Princeton
University Press. Featuring a large-format design complete with revealing stories and richly illustrated with
color photographs of Story/Time’s original stage production, the book reflects on Jones’ art and life, and
describes the genesis of the work, which was inspired by modernist composer and performer John Cage.
Resulting from Jones’ presentations at Princeton University for the Toni Morrison Lectures in 2012, the text
includes a progression of 60 single-page narratives (hand-picked from his collection of almost 200 stories
from Story/Time), presented in a random order similar to that of the live dance work. (Review copies are
available upon request.)
EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES
The Company will continue to expand its dynamic education program, led by New York Live Arts Education
Director and former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member Leah Cox. The 2014-2015 academic
year marks the Company’s sixth year in partnership with the Bard College Dance Program, where
Company teaching artists and New York Live Arts guest artists teach an innovative curriculum designed to
cultivate the next generation of dance-makers and creative thinkers. For the 2014-2015 academic year, Cox,
Stuart Singer, Beth Gill and Cori Olinghouse will teach contemporary technique to beginning- through
advanced-level dance students. Cox will share the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's approach to
movement, while former New York Live Arts commissioned artist Gill, former Studio Series artist Olinghouse,
and Singer, a former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Dance Company member, who has also performed at Live Arts with
numerous artists (including in Gill’s most recent work), will share their unique movement styles and
practices. The Company will also complete a one-week residency at Bard this coming academic year.
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 pre-professional dancers and produces a broad range of discussion events at home and on
the road.
A major highlight of the 2014-2015 reconstruction projects is the licensing of Ravel: Landscape or Portrait?
(movements 1 & 4) by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company member Sean Curran (current Co-Chair of the Department of Dance at Tisch) was
instrumental in bringing the work to NYU, marking the first licensing project for Ravel: Landscape or
Portrait? Restaged by Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director of the Company, along with current Company
dancer Shayla-Vie Jenkins, the work will be set on the Second Avenue Dance Company, the resident student
dance company of the Department of Dance at Tisch.
Another educational highlight of the 2014-2015 Season will be Jones’ participation in Shared Practice, one
of Live Arts’ signature educational programs, where season artists share the physical and creative practices
behind their work. Shared Practice workshops consist of a process-focused session, providing participants
the opportunity to recharge their own artistry by experiencing different approaches to making and moving.
In conjunction with the Company’s fall season at Live Arts, Jones will lead a Shared Practice workshop on
Saturday, November 8, 2014, from 3pm – 6pm.
ABOUT THE BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY
Over the past 32 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. In 2011, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company merged with
Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts, of which Bill T. Jones is the Artistic Director.
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); Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL);
Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy); Story/Time (2012, Peak
Performances); and A Rite (2013, Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill).
The Company is currently touring Play and Play: an evening of movement and music, two repertory
programs featuring music-inspired works; Body Against Body, an intimate and focused collection of duet
works drawn from the Company’s 32-year history; A Rite, a dance-theater collaboration with Anne Bogart
and SITI Company and Story/Time, a work inspired by John Cage’s Indeterminacy.
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company consists of dancers Antonio Brown, Rena Butler, Talli Jackson,
Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leonard, Jr., I-Ling Liu, Erick Montes Chavero, Joseph Poulson and Jenna
Riegel. Bjorn Amelan serves as the Creative Director for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and
Janet Wong serves as Associate Artistic Director.
ABOUT BILL T. JONES
Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of New York Live Arts and Artistic Director/Co-Founder of the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, is a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and
writer who has received major honors ranging from a 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award to Kennedy Center
Honors in 2010. Honored with the 2014 Doris Duke Award, Jones was recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2010, 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 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.
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 co-founder 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 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 has been featured in numerous television, radio, film and documentary programs over the years.
In 2013, Jones was profiled by PBS-affiliate Thirteen/NYC-ARTS and featured on NPR’s popular Talk of the
Nation program and the acclaimed Made HERE documentary series. In recent years, he has also been
profiled on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show and the Colbert Report. 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).
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.
ABOUT ARNIE ZANE
Arnie Zane (1948-1988) was a native New Yorker born in the Bronx and educated at the State University of
New York (SUNY) at Binghamton. In 1971, Mr. Zane and Bill T. Jones began their long collaboration in
choreography and in 1973 formed the American Dance Asylum in Binghamton with Lois Welk. Mr. Zane’s first
recognition in the arts came as a photographer when he received a Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS)
Fellowship in 1973. Mr. Zane was the recipient of a second CAPS Fellowship in 1981 for choreography, as well
as two Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1983 and 1984). In 1980, Mr.
Zane was co-recipient, with Mr. Jones, of the German Critics Award for his work, Blauvelt Mountain. Rotary
Action, a duet with Mr. Jones, was filmed for television, co-produced by WGBH-TV Boston and Channel 4 in
London. Continuous Replay: The Photographs of Arnie Zane was published by MIT Press in April 1999.
2014-2015 TOUR PROGRAMS
Analogy (working title) is the Company’s newest creation, currently in development. Bill T. Jones, along
with Janet Wong (Associate Artistic Director of the Company) and the Company dancers, are developing a
new evening-length work in two parts, focusing on the memory and the effect that powerful events have on
the actions of individuals and—more importantly—on their often unexpressed inner life. InAnalogy (working
title), Jones continues to explore the intermingling of text, storytelling and movement, paying special
attention to how new experiences can be had through the coalescing of these elements. Informing the work
are two literary sources—an interview conducted by Jones with Dora Amelan (a French-Jewish nurse and
social worker) chronicling her life experiences, as well as the story of Ambros Adelwarth, from W.G. Sebald’s
celebrated historical novel, The Emigrants—that ruminate on the nature of service and duty, and inquire into
the characteristics of a life well lived.
Analogy (working title) will premiere at Montclair State University in June 2015.
A Rite (2013) 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. A Rite utilizes the social-historical context of the score as a point of departure, reflecting on the human
condition—sacrifice, creative and spiritual death, and the individual against or with the community. Called “a
serious, intricate, multidirectional centennial tribute to a work of art whose spell it deepens” (The New York
Times) A Rite was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill with additional commissioning support provided by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts
at Bard College.
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.”
Co-commissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State University (NJ) and the Walker Art Center.
Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music (2012) features a collection of works set to chamber
music, including D-Man in the Waters, Spent Days Out Yonder, Continuous Replay, Ravel: Landscape or
Portrait? and Story/. 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,” and Financial Times raved that “DMan in the Waters radiates the clarity of love.”
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. As The New York Times states, “…it offers a clearer look at the tension between loose swing and
angular articulation in Mr. Jones’s movement. It shows his skill in establishing a foreground and a
background while letting them blend.”
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
work that “sticks in the mind” (New York Theater Wire), Continuous Replay “is a thorough primer in
Jones/Zane style: sharp versus flowing, large versus small, straight versus angled” (The New York Times). A
new score by Jerome Begin incorporates material from Ludwig Van Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1
and String Quartet Op. 135.
Ravel: Landscape or Portrait? (2012) 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. The New York Times
describes the work as “made up of protean tableaus” with “Arresting moments…continually absorbed into
the flow.”
Story/ (2013) is a continuation of the Company’s investigation in using indeterminacy as a choreographic
tool. Following the model for the acclaimed Story/Time, the work employs a random menu of movement that
is interrogated by Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No 14 in D Minor (Death and the Maiden) to craft an
energetic conversation between the music and movement. Called a “strong” work with “compellingly
enigmatic duets…’Story/’ is alive with glimpses of ordinary life” (The New York Times).
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 the career of 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. As New York Magazine says, “The
combination of brisk formality and a deeply sensual attack…was riveting decades ago and it’s riveting
today.” Commissioned by the ICA/Boston.
* DOWNLOAD 2014-2015 TOURING SCHEDULE *
* DOWNLOAD 2014-2015 EDUCATION PROJECTS *
About New York Live Arts
New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry
offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and
active engagement with the social, political and cultural currents of our times. At the center of this identity is
Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director, a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer.
We commission, produce and present performances in our 20,000 square foot home, which includes a 184seat theater and two 1,200 square foot studios that can be combined into one large studio. New York Live
Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, provides an extensive range of
participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development
of artists. Our influence extends beyond NYC through our international cultural exchange program that
currently places artists in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Funding Support
The creation of new work by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is made possible by the
Company's Partners in Creation: Ellen Poss, Jane Bovingdon Semel & Terry Semel; Anne Delaney; Stephen &
Ruth Hendel; Eleanor Friedman; and Zoe Eskin.
Major support for New York Live Arts is provided by: The Brownstone Foundation; Con Edison; The Joseph
and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation; The Ford Foundation; The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; French American Cultural
Exchange (FACE); The Howard Gilman Foundation; The Grand Marnier Foundation; Jerome Foundation;
Lambent Foundation; MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Mertz
Gilmore Foundation; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts; The Jerome
Robbins Foundation; The Scherman Foundation; The Shubert 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.
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