February 27, 2004 -

OTTAWA -- New York’s Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company celebrates their 20^th anniversary with a spectacular retrospective in Southam Hall of the National Arts Centre on Saturday, March 13 at 20:00. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is one of the most sought-after dance troupes in the world -- the company has performed in 30 countries and over 120 cities since its creation 20 years ago. Included on the programme are Power/Full, There were… , Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger and Mercy 10 X 8 on a Circle. Please be advised: there may be nudity in this production.

This performance by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is part of the NAC’s Dance Series A, which is generously sponsored by Casino du Lac Leamy.

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. Bill T. Jones poses rigorous questions involving society, humanity, mortality, sex, race, and identity. He addresses the audience in ways that are not just about aesthetics, but also about social issues – while remaining conscious of the impulse to create work that is striking for its formal qualities and its allure. His ferocious message is wedded to uncompromising physical grace.

Power/Full (2002) is a quintet filled with subtle emotional shifts and set to two scores: one is a witty re-edit of a fire and brimstone televangelist preaching by John Oswald and the other is a majestic interpretation of a Kyrie by Laurel MacDonald.

There Were… (1993, revised 2002) is a work for ten dancers whose dramatic changes in movement tempo and regal bearing suggest “a pastoral ritual.”  The music is by John Cage.

Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger (2003) is based on Flannery O'Connor’s beguiling short story. It is not so much about race as it is about how racial and religious reasoning define and distort essential human interactions – always with the possibility of redemption. For Bill T. Jones, the story's meaning is enigmatic and provocative, rife with images that suggest partnering between the strong and the weak, and a taut dawn-to-dusk timeline. The five duets, gender neutral and colourblind, parade through the vivid, language of the short story as it is read live by a male and a female reader. The choreography negotiates not only O'Connor’s narrative, but the luminous Protestant hymn-driven original score by Daniel Bernard Roumain.

Mercy 10 x 8 on a Circle (2003) is a companion piece to Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger. It removes that work’s rigorous and multi-faceted partnering for five duets and presents it as a compellingly formalist and constantly evolving cycle of duets. They create an exhilarating and unpredictable theme and variation response to Beethoven's 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C Minor, performed by Glenn Gould.

In a review in The Washington Post, Sarah Kaufman wrote “The journey doesn’t end one the dancers leave the stage – it continues in the mind and memory.” There are good reasons. The choreography of Bill T. Jones alternately shimmers with lyrical radiance, plays witty games with perception, and stuns with its luminous magic. Jones’s power to surprise is the product of a mind, imagination, and spirit that come once in a generation. The company’s repertoire ranges from full-evening works to duets, solos, and group pieces defined by their distinctive musicality, majestic force, and humanity. The dancers are renowned for their dazzling clarity and commitment, agility, and sense of joyous spontaneity.

“He can be florid, prodigal with movement, but in this piece, his style is as lean as O'Connor's prose — fluent yet taut, imaginative yet everyday — and it makes lustrous the enigmatic crevices in her story.”

Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice 2004

“The zigzags of the music propel the dancers into a tournament with a variety of feats. An excellent work. The evening was a resounding success.”

Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, February 2002

“They boasted the sort of multi-layered, disarmingly accessible performances that confirm Jones as a master maker and the company as one of the glories of American dance."

Octavio Roca, The San Francisco Chronicle, April 2000

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company performs in Southam Hall of the National Arts Centre on Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 20:00. Tickets are $48.50, $45.50 and $36, and $25.25, $23.75 and $19 for students (upon presentation of a valid student ID card). Tickets are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC’s web-site at www.nac-cna.ca. Last-minute tickets (subject to availability) for full-time students are $9.50 at the Live Rush Centre in the NAC Foyer after 18:00 on the day of performance only, upon presentation of a valid `Live Rush’ card.

Photos for all dance events can be viewed and downloaded at: www.nac-cna.ca/media/

Information:
Gerald Morris
Marketing and Media Relations,
NAC Dance Department
(613) 947-7000, ext. 249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca

Founded in 1982, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is the product of an 11-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and the late Arnie Zane. The company emerged onto the international scene in 1982 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the eleven-member company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire (currently over 75 works) in over 130 American cities and 30 countries. The company has also taught and performed in Asia and Southeast Asia. Audiences of approximately 100,000 annually see the Company across the country and around the world. Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s work has often been described as a fusion of dance and theatre. The repertoire is highly diverse in subject matter, visual imagery, and length of each dance, ranging from fifteen minutes to two hours. Some of its most celebrated creations are evening-length works, including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990), Still/Here (1994), and Mr. Jones’s solo production The Breathing Show (1999). The company's recent collaboration with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center featured the music of Beethoven, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn; it received its world premiere in January 2002 and toured with the Orion String Quartet through the spring of 2003. The company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and Performance Awards, ‘Bessies’, and a nomination for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance and Best New Dance Production. The Dance Heritage Coalition named Bill T. Jones one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures. Off stage, the company’s work has been seen in such documentaries as Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (Great Performances Series), Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers, and 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 Modern Dance.

Bill T. Jones, a 1994 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, 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. Before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982, Mr. Jones choreographed and performed nationally and internationally as a soloist and duet company with his late partner, Arnie Zane. In addition to creating more than 50 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, Axis Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berkshire Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Diversions Dance Company. He has also received numerous commissions to create new works for his own company, including premieres for the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and for St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra.

In 1995, Mr. Jones directed and performed in a collaborative work with Toni Morrison and Max Roach, Degga, commissioned by Lincoln Center's Serious Fun Festival. His collaboration with Jessye Norman, How! Do! We! Do! premiered as part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers New Visions series. The Breathing Show, Mr. Jones' evening-long solo, premiered in 1999. In 1990, Mr. Jones choreographed Sir Michael Tippet's New Year under the direction of Sir Peter Hall for the Houston Grand Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. He conceived, co-directed and choreographed Mother of Three Sons, which was performed at the Munich Biennale, New York City Opera, and the Houston Grande Opera. He also directed Lost in the Stars for the Boston Lyric Opera. Mr. Jones’s theatre involvement includes co-directing Perfect Courage with Rhodessa Jones and directing Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain for The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Television credits include Fever Swamp, Untitled, a documentary on Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land, Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers, D-Man in the Waters included in Free to Dance, an Emmy award-winning documentary (PBS), Still/Here (CBS), and a Blackside documentary entitled I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Arts.

In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, Mr. Jones has received several other prestigious awards and degrees. Mr. Jones served as the 1998 Robert Gwathmey Chair at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science. Mr. Jones's memoirs, Last Night on Earth, were 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 in 1989 by Station Hill Press. Hyperion Books published Dance, a children's book written by Bill T. Jones and photographer Susan Kuklin, in 1998. Mr. Jones is proud to have contributed to Continuous Replay: The Photography of Arnie Zane, published by MIT Press in 1999.