Company History and Mission Statement
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is currently celebrating its 25th Anniversary season. The Company was founded after 11 years of collaboration during which Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948 - 1988) redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. It emerged onto the international scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum, which featured legendary drummer Max Roach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the 10 member company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa and the UK. Today, the Harlem based Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world.
The Company has distinguished itself through its teaching and performing in various universities, festivals and under the aegis of government agencies such as the US Information Agency (in Eastern Europe, Asia and South East Asia). Audiences of approximately 50,000 to 100,000 annually see the Company across the country and around the world.
The work of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company freely explores both musically driven works and works using a wide variety of texts (such as Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger based on Flannery O'Connor's 1955 short story, The Artificial Nigger). The repertoire is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft. The company has been acknowledged for its intensely collaborative method of creation that has included artists as diverse as Keith Haring, The Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Cassandra Wilson, Fado singer Misia, Jazz pianist Fred Hersch, Ross Bleckner, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Julius Hemphill, and Peteris Vasks, among others. The collaborations of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with visual artists were the subject of Art Performs Life (1998), a groundbreaking exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Some of its most celebrated creations are evening length works including Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990 - premiered as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994 - premiered at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early, Visibility Was Poor (1996 - premiered at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, IA, nominated for London's Laurence Olivier Award); You Walk? (2000 - premiered at Bologna, Italy, European Capital of Culture 2000); and Blind Date (2006 - premiered at Montclair State University's Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, NJ). The ongoing, site-specific, Another Evening is now in its sixth incarnation as Another Evening: I Bow Down.
The Company has also produced two evenings centered on Bill T. Jones' solo performance: The Breathing Show (1999 - Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City) and As I Was Saying... (2005 - premiered at the Walker Art Center's William and Nadine McGuire Theater).
The Company has been featured in many publications. Perhaps one of the most in depth examinations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane's collaborations can be found in Body Against Body: The Dance and other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1989 - Station Hill Press) edited by Elizabeth Zimmer.
The Company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and Performance Awards ("Bessie") for Chapel/Chapter at Harlem Stage (2006), The Table Project (2001), D-Man in the Waters (1989 and 2001), musical scoring and costume design for Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990), and for the 1986 Joyce Theater Season. The Company was nominated for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for "outstanding achievement in dance and Best New Dance Production" for We Set Out Early... Visibility was Poor.
The Company celebrated its landmark 20th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with 37 guest artists including Susan Sarandon, Cassandra Wilson and Vernon Reid. The Phantom Project: The 20th Season presented a diverse repertoire of over 15 revivals and new works.
In 2007, Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, IL commissioned the Company to create a work to honor the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The Company created three new productions in response: 100 Migrations (2008), a site-specific community performance project; Serenade/The Proposition (2008), examining the nature of history; and Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray (2009), the making of which is the subject of a feature-length documentary by Kartemquin Films entitled A Good Man, to be broadcast on PBS American Masters in 2011.
Mission
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company nurtures the art of dance, educates the public, and promotes collaboration among members of the allied arts of music, theater, new media, visual arts, etc. and the communities in which they work.
