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The Program: Past and Present Collide
The company will present three works that span its history, providing a window into Jones’ artistic development and enduring concerns.
Continuous Replay, one of the oldest pieces in the company repertoire, originated as a solo by Arnie Zane in the 1970s before evolving into a duet with Jones and finally an ensemble piece. Composed of 45 gestures developed by Zane, the movements repeat throughout the 30-minute performance, sometimes in unison, sometimes asynchronously.
“ The piece has a fascinating history,” says Janet Wong, associate artistic director, who has been with the company since 1996.“ It shows how a simple sequence of movements can transform when performed by different bodies in different contexts over time.”
D-Man in the Waters, created in 1989, was inspired by the death of company dancer Demian Acquavella from AIDS-related complications. The piece deals frankly with the AIDS crisis that devastated the arts community in the 1980s and’ 90s.
“ It was made during a time when the world— especially the art and dance world, the downtown New York world— had lost so many people,” Wong explains. The work is one of the most athletically demanding in the repertoire, with dancers bursting onto stage, sometimes flying or sliding across it headfirst.
The program also features an excerpt from Story / Time, which was performed in full at Jacob’ s Pillow during the company’ s last visit in 2012. Inspired by avant-garde composer John Cage’ s chance-driven work Indeterminacy, the piece features Jones seated at a table on stage, reading from a randomized selection of his own stories while dancers perform in numbered squares around him.
“ Every performance will be different,” says Kyle Maude, the company’ s producing director.“ Bill will open his book, and he won’ t know the order the stories will be in.” Composer Ted Coffey, who created the original score, will reunite with Jones for these performances.
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A Partnership in Life and Art
One of the seminal figures of the post-modern dance world since the 1980s, Jones’ journey began far from the spotlight. Born in Bunnell, Florida, in 1952, the tenth of twelve children of agricultural workers, Jones and his family migrated up the Eastern Seaboard before settling in New York’ s Finger Lakes Region.
“ I knew two kinds of sweat,” Jones has often said,“ the sweat from working in the field and the sweat that came from athletics.” But when he discovered dance, he encountered what he calls“ poetic sweat”— the sweat found in a dance studio.
It was at SUNY Binghamton in 1971 that Jones met Arnie Zane, a photographer who would become his creative and life partner. Together, they co-founded American Dance Asylum in 1974 with Lois Welk and Jill Becker, experimenting with“ contact improvisation,” a form of dance that involves sharing weight, maintaining physical contact, and supporting one another’ s movements— techniques that would become hallmarks of Jones’ choreographic style.
Jones and Zane formed their own company in 1982. From its earliest days, the company was known for its non-traditional performers, representing different body types, sizes, shapes, and colors.“ We wanted to have a company that was not the world as it is,” says Jones,“ but the
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world as we saw it.”
As a mixed-race couple, Jones and Zane were a study in contrast: Jones, tall, Black, and athletic; Zane, short, white, and angular in his movements. Their duets often employed multimedia techniques— film projections, photography, spoken dialog— with a decidedly socio-political focus and an open display of their personal relationship.
When Zane died of complications of AIDS in 1988, Jones continued their work and has retained his co-founder’ s name for the company.“ Long before there was any talk of gay marriage, I was determined to say the company was the child Arnie and I had together,” says Jones.
Evolution and Legacy
Now in its 43rd year, the company has its residence at New York Live Arts( NYLA), formerly the Dance Theater Workshop. Jones serves as artistic director of both the company and NYLA, creating a hub for experimental performance in Manhattan.
“ Having a strong artistic director who is constantly thinking, making, and exploring is one of the reasons we’ ve been
The Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company will perform during Festival Week 7 at Jacob’ s Pillow, in the Ted Shawn Theatre. The company will present two seminal works by its founders: Continuous Replay( opposite page) and a site-based version of Story / Time( this page).
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PAUL B. GOODE |