The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company presents a new work. In October, almost a year ago, I wrote about one of two pieces that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company premiered at the Joyce Theater. Lance: Pretty AKA The Escape Artist told through movement, speech, music, movable set pieces, and props the story of Lance T. Briggs, a nephew of Bill T. Jones, who began as a promising ballet … [Read more...]
The Story of a Life
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company presents a trilogy (through November 6th). Bill T. Jones has always liked to talk on stage—while dancing or when not dancing. Sometimes he wants to get across ideas too complex to be expressed in movement alone; sometimes the movements expresses what was churning beneath the words, and sometimes the words hold the movements in check. Years ago, sitting … [Read more...]
A New Stravinsky Rite; Forget the Virgin
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company collaborates with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company in “A Rite,” presented in the Richard B. Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, July 6 and 7. 1913 was quite a year, and saying “Happy 100th Anniversary” mightn’t be the most appropriate salutation. Forget such minor irritations as the United States initiating an income tax. Think instead about artists who … [Read more...]
No Words
Bill T. Jones is a taking a holiday from the spoken word. The last time he did that may have been in 1992. Unlike his Serenade/The Proposition (2008), Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray (2009), and Story/Time (2011), none of those on view during the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s season at the Joyce Theater (March 26 through April 7) makes use of text. None of them presents a view … [Read more...]
Past Present
It is 1979; it is 2011. It’s 1981; no it’s 2011. Bill T. Jones wears glasses now, and I can’t read without mine. Arnie Zane died in 1988; his spirit and his name live on in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In the 1960s, I was a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop. In the 1970s, Bill made his ferocious New York debut as a soloist on that organization’s Fresh Tracks series. In 2011, … [Read more...]