Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Over the past 30 years the
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the Company was born out of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the 9-member Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The Company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries on every major continent. In 2011, the Company announced a groundbreaking merger with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts, an artist-led producing and presenting organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating.
Bill T. Jones is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of the
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and the Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts. He is a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer whose major honors include a 1994 MacArthur “genius” Award to Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and named “an irreplaceable dance treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition. His work in dance has been recognized with the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, the Wexner Prize, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the Dance Magazine Award.
Mr. Jones’s Broadway theater credits include a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed
FELA!, the musical co-conceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by Mr. Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography in
Spring Awakening, as well as an Obie Award for the show’s off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway production of
The Seven earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. In addition to creating more than 140 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, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, and Berlin Opera Ballet, among others. His collaborative works include projects with Toni Morrison, Max Roach, and Jessye Norman. The Company’s repertory is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft, and includes musically driven works as well as works using a variety of texts. Some of its most celebrated creations are evening-length works including
Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land, Still/Here, We Set Out Early... Visibility Was Poor, You Walk?, Blind Date, Chapel/Chapter, and Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray. The making of Fondly… was the subject of a feature-length documentary film entitled
A Good Man that aired on PBS American Masters in 2011. The Company has received multiple New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Awards and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Dance and Best New Dance Production.”
The Company conducts intensive workshops, master classes, lectures and other engagement activities at home and on the road, all born from the strong desire to “participate in the world of ideas.”
Further details, including Company members’ biographies, can be found at
www.newyorklivearts.org.
VISITING GUEST ARTISTS
NICOLE SMITH, Artistic Director of project:Smith, also works for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company as a teaching artist and repetiteur, touring nationally and internationally. As a performer, she has danced in Doug Elkins and Friends’
Fraulein Maria as Maria, and is also currently working with Zvi Gottheiner/Zvidance, Donna Scro/Freespace Dance, Maxine Steinman & Dancers, and as a guest artist with Shen Wei Dance Arts. Post-graduation from Montclair State University, Nicole’s solo pieces and her duet with partner Lisa Peluso (Elisa Monte Dance) have been showcased in theaters and festivals across the USA, United Kingdom, and Asia. As an independent artist, she has had the opportunity to teach modern dance and set choreography at many universities, performing arts schools, and most recently, Dance New Amsterdam. For more information, visit:
www.nicolemariesmith.com.
STUART SINGER is a Brooklyn based performer and teacher. Originally from Western Massachusetts, he began dancing at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter High School and received his BFA from the SUNY-Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. He has danced in the companies of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane (2004-2008), Doug Varone (2009), Wally Cardona (2008-2010) and Lucinda Childs (2011-present). He has recently collaborated on performance projects with dance artists Yanira Castro, Jack Ferver, Christopher Williams and Mollye Maxner, and is currently creating new works with Gwen Welliver, Joanna Kotze, and Lindsay Clark. He is currently performing in the revival tour of the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera,
Einstein on the Beach. Stuart is a guest artist in dance at Bennington College (2011-2012) and is a teaching artist for New York Live Arts; recent Live Arts teaching projects include a guest faculty position at Bard College (2010-2011), various company workshops, and re-staging the works of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane at Princeton University and California State University - Long Beach. Recent guest teaching includes Wesleyan University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, SUNY-Purchase College, and Mimar Sinan University (Istanbul).
