Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982 and is the product of an eleven-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane.
It emerged onto the international scene in 1982 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum with legendary drummer, Max Roach. Since then, the eleven-member Company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire (currently over 75 works) in over 130 American cities and 30 countries.
Their 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’ solo production, The Breathing Show (1999) Still/Here
Still/Here The Company’s most recent production, a collaboration with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center featuring the music of Beethoven, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, received its world premiere at Hancher Auditorium at University of Iowa in January 2002 and continued to tour with the Orion String Quartet through the spring of 2003.
Currently the Company is reviving eight dances spanning from 1980-1996, and preparing a new work commissioned by the American Dance Festival as it gears up for its 20th Anniversary Season in 2003-04.
The Company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and Performance Awards, “Bessies”, for its 1986 Joyce Season, D-Man in the Waters, and for musical scoring and costume design for Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land. Recently, 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. Last year, 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, 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.
