The McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist-Scholar Resident: 2009-2010

            Bill T. Jones

The eighth McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar will be multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer Bill T. Jones. Bill will be in residence at Skidmore October 25-26, 2009, along with members of his company from October 25-29. Just as in 2008, the McCormack Residency will operate in collaboration with the First-Year Experience (FYE) providing curricular, co-curricular, and residential opportunities as part of the year long FYE program, which for the class of 2013, will examine the American Presidency.

Bill T. Jones will speak at 8:00 p.m. Monday, October 26, in Gannett Auditorium. His talk will be illustrated with video clips and followed by a question-and-answer session. He is expected to discuss the massive political shift occasioned by the Lincoln and Obama presidencies and their impact on his choreography, as seen in three works viewed on DVD by the incoming freshmen last summer: Serenade/The Proposition (2008), which incorporates Lincoln's words; A Good Man! A Good Man?, which investigates key moments from Lincoln's life and envisions what might have been had he lived to oversee the post-Civil War program of reconstruction; and Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray, which explores slavery and what Lincoln has to say to Americans today.

Bill T. Jones has graced the cover of Time and was recently featured in the acclaimed HBO documentary The Black List. As an artist, Mr. Jones creates groundbreaking interdisciplinary dance pieces that examine such issues as race, politics, love, aspiration, war and faith. His iconic choreography and unflinching social provocation have earned him a prominent place in the history of contemporary performance. On an international scale, his works stimulate ideas, raise questions, promote public dialogue and bear out his conviction that art is a catalyst for reflection, engagement and action.

In 2009, he will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Since its founding by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. 

He has also won a 2007 Tony Award, 2007 Obie Award and 2006 CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for the Broadway hit Spring Awakening. He is the recipient of the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the 2005 Wexner Prize and the Aaron Davis Hall Harlem Renaissance Award. He is also a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient in 1994, named one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000, and was awarded The 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for reshaping the cultural landscape. 

He 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 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 the summers of 1992, 1998 and 2007, Bill T. Jones was in residence with his company at Skidmore College and in 2008, he received an honorary doctorate during commencement.