Bill T. Jones - Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company - Interview - Biography

Dance Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Elizabeth Zimmer

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY has a full schedule for its anniversary season, which began in September with a two-week retrospective at The Kitchen in New York, and continues with a residency at Columbia College in Chicago, a week in France, and a five-day run, featuring the New York premiere of Reading, Mercy, at BAM in February. The tour continues in March in Canada, and in June in, England and Scotland.

Other troupes are showing his work: The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company will bring his and before ... to BAM's Next Wave Festival December 9, 11, and 13.

Longtime collaborator Lois Well Jones and Zanes's first contact improvisation teacher in Binghamton in the 1970s, and now artistic director of both 171 Cedar Arts Center in Coming, New York, and The Yard, a colony for dancers on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, reflects on her period of collaboration with them.

"When Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane, and I were dancing as the American Dance Asylum, Bill pushed relentlessly for the most rigorous investigation of the material. Suspicious of easy solutions, he has the intellectual and physical strength to wrestle long and hard with difficult problems. When others are satisfied with the results of their artistic inquiry, he's still vigorously re-framing the questions. His genius lies in the depth of his commitment to the process of making art."

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY AT A GLANCE

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY

853 BROADWAY, SUITE 1706, NEW YORK, NY 10003

212.477.1850; FAX 212.777.5263

www.billtjones.arg

info@billtjones.org

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Bill T. Jones

ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Bjorn Amelan

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Julia Blackburn

ASSISTANT TO CHOREOGRAPHER, REHEARSAL DIRECTOR: Janet Wang GENERAL MANAGER: Alison Schwartz

* Annual budget: $2.4 million

* 10 dancers, 2 apprentices, ages 23-32, ranging from 5' 2" to 6' 2" in height

* 35-week contract; non-union company

* Open auditions are scheduled on an as-needed basis, and are posted on the company Web site. Primarily held in New York City.

* Performances use both live and prerecorded music, including commissioned scores. In 2002 the company collaborated with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for a tour featuring the Orion String Quartet and Chamber Music Society Two.

* Venues: National and international performance spaces ranging from 100-5,000 seats, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, Sadler's Wells (London), Maison de la Dense (Lyon), Het Muziektheater [Amsterdam], and U.S. colleges and universities

* Touring: Nationally and internationally, for an average of twenty weeks yearly. Most tours include master classes and lecture demonstrations.

* No official school

* Outreach: Master classes, community residencies and workshops, lecture-demonstrations, panel discussions, post-performance Q&A discussions, and occasionally, opportunities to collaborate and perform with the company

Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (who died in 1988) founded their company, which has been described as a fusion of dance and theater, in 1982. Since then, it has performed in more than 130 American cities and 30 countries. The company received New York Dance and Performance Awards for its 1986 season at The Joyce Theater and for the musical scoring and costume design for Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land in 1990 In 1999, it was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. The Dance Heritage Coalition has named Jones (who received a Dance Magazine Award in 1993) one of America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures in 2000. The company's work has been seen in such documentaries as Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (on Great Performances), Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Mayors, I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Artists, and the Emmy Award-winning Free to Dance: The Presence of African Americans in Dance. The repertoire of more than seventy-five, works ranges from collaborative historic dances by Zone and Jones to multimedia and community-based projects, to contemporary creations by Jones.