Tag Archives: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company

CONTINUOUS REPLAY PERFORMANCE AND FUNDRAISER

As part of a fundraiser for Black Strategy FundThe Brotherhood Sister Sol, and Buy From A Black Woman, the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company presents a virtual recreation of Zane’s CONTINUOUS REPLAY.

Amidst the isolation and racial uprisings in the early summer of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic continued its spread, forty-four current and former company members came together (while being apart) to create something as a community in support of the Black Lives Matter movement… In 1991, three years after Arnie’s passing at the height of the AIDS pandemic, Jones made Arnie’s CONTINUOUS REPLAY choreography into a full company work—which has connected generations of company members and was, for most of them, the only way to know Arnie. The diverse cast of performers spanning four decades—including Arthur Aviles, Sean Curran, Odile Reine-Adelaide, Stefanie Batten Bland, Rosalynde LeBlanc, Heidi Latsky, Jenna Riegel, and many others—filmed themselves while in isolation across four continents. The original soundtrack is created by composer John Oswald and editing of the videos was done by Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong.*

See link below for details.

BILL T. JONES—CONTINUOUS REPLY: COME TOGETHER*

Thursday, November 19.

5 pm on the West Coast; 8 pm East Coast.

From top: Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane; Zane, Continuous Replay, Maison de la Danse de Lyon, 1993 performance, image courtesy Numeridanse; Continuous Replay: Come Together; Jones, photograph by Anthony Barboza, courtesy and © the photographer and Getty Images; Zane and Jones, Secret PasturesBAM Next Wave Festival, 1984, set design by Keith Haring, 1984, photograph by Tom Caravaglia, courtesy and © the photographer and the Keith Haring Foundation.

ON THE WATER

This weekend in upstate New York, the Lumberyard presents ON THE WATER, a work in development by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.

Featured dancers include J. Bouey, Vinson Fraley, Jr., Barrington Hinds, Chanel Howard, Dean Husted, Shane Larson, s. lumbert, Nayaa Opong, Marie Lloyd Paspe, and Huiwang Zhang.

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY—ON THE WATER

Saturday, August 31, at 8 pm.

Sunday, September 1, at 7 pm.

Lumberyard

62 Water Street, Catskill.

From top: Bill T. Jones, photograph by Ian Douglas; Nayaa Opong, courtesy Artistic Centre of Innovative Dance; Huiwang Zhang (left) and Vinson Fraley, Jr., in Jones’ A Letter to My Nephew, 2017, photograph by Andrea Mohin; Dean Husted, courtesy of New York Live Arts; Chanel Howard, Danceplug; s. lumbert, Vimeo; Marie Lloyd Paspe, courtesy of New York Live Arts; Barrington Hinds, photograph by Jaqi Medlock; Shane Larson, Dance Pulp; J. Bouey, photograph by Phil Mahabeer. Images courtesy and © the artists and photographers.

BILL T. JONES — ANALOGY TRILOGY

Arnie Zane [and I] built this company out of the same troubled milieu that we’re all living through right now—racism, sexism—and we have been able to make an organization that expressed my belief that art could save us.” — Bill T. Jones

As an innovator of post-modern dance since the 1970s and survivor of the American cultural wars of the ’80s, choreographer Bill T. Jones has endured catastrophes both political and personal. He lived through the disgrace of the government’s non-response to the AIDS epidemic, and lost Zane to the disease in 1988.

With his company—the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company—Jones’ created Still/Here (1994), a mixed-media, performance-art dance piece incorporating videotaped footage of terminally ill patients speaking into the camera. In an infamous attack on a work she declined to see firsthand, the New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce railed against what she dismissed as foundation-dependent “victim art”:

“By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. I think of him as literally undiscussable… because he has taken sanctuary among the unwell. Victim art defies criticism not only because we feel sorry for the victim but because we are cowed by art.”*

An uproar immediately followed, with Tony Kushner, Camille Paglia, Hilton Kramer, and Joyce Carol Oates weighing in from both sides. The author and activist bell hooks wrote:

“To write so contemptuously about a work one has not seen is an awesome flaunting of privilege—a testimony to the reality that there is no marginalized group or individual powerful enough to silence or suppress reactionary voices. Ms. Croce’s article is not courageous or daring, precisely because it merely mirrors the ruling political mood of our time.”*

After the publication of “Discussing the Undiscussable,” Croce’s output decreased significantly, while Jones—who recently dropped “dance” from his company’s title: “We are a contemporary performance ensemble”—has moved from strength to strength.**

This weekend at Royce Hall, CAP UCLA will present two complete performances of Jones’ ANALOGY TRILOGY, a durational work “focusing on memory and the effect of powerful events on the actions of individuals and, more importantly, on their often unexpressed inner life.” During the performance, musical accompaniment will be provided by composer Nick Hallett, pianist Emily Manzo, baritone Matthew Gamble, and the dancers.***

The trilogy can be seen in one daylong event, or as separate afternoon and evening performances:

ANALOGY/DORA: TRAMONTANE is based on the World War II experiences of French Jewish nurse Dora Amelan, the mother of Jones’ partner and company creative director Bjorn Amelan.

ANALOGY/LANCE: PRETTY aka THE ESCAPE ARTIST takes as its subject Jones’ nephew Lance Briggs. Art, in this case, could not save a life of promise after Lance quit dancing and turned to drugs and hustling.

ANALOGY/AMBROS: THE EMIGRANT draws from the W.G. Sebald novel The Emigrant to show how “trauma can go underground in the psyche of an individual and direct—consciously and unconsciously—the course of that individual’s life.”

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY

ANALOGY TRILOGY

Saturday and Sunday, November 3 and 4.

ANALOGY/DORA and ANALOGY/LANCE begin at 2 pm, with an intermission between parts.

ANALOGY/AMBROS begins at 7 pm.

The event breaks for dinner from 5:30 pm to 7 pm.

Royce Hall, UCLA

10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles.

*Arlene Croce, “Discussing the Undiscussable,” in Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 708–719.

Croce’s article was originally published in the December 26, 1994–January 2, 1995 issue of The New Yorker.

The responses by bell hooks and others ran under “Who’s the Victim? Dissenting Voices Answer Arlene Croce’s Critique of Victim Art” in the January 30, 1995 issue of the magazine.

**Gia Kourlas, “Bill T. Jones is Making Room in Dance for More Than Dance,” New York Times, September 18, 2018.

***Dancers performing during the Royce Hall engagement include Vinson Fraley, Jr., Barrington Hinds, Shane Larson, I-Ling Liu, Penda N’Diaye, Jenna Riegel, Christina Robson, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, and Huiwang Zhang.

Color photographs: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Analogy Trilogy, photographs by Paul B. Goode, image credit: CAP UCLA. Black and white photograph: Bill T. Jones (left) and Arnie Zane, image credit: New York Live Arts.

UPCOMING DANCE FROM CAP UCLA

Mon Elue Noire

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company—whose collaboration with SITI Company, A Rite, brought down the house at Royce Hall three years ago—is returning to UCLA this autumn with ANALOGY TRILOGY, a marathon work that combines Analogy/Dora and Analogy/Lance with Analogy Ambros, based on a story by W. G. Sebald.

Batsheva_Venezuela_photo (c) Ascaf__2714

The Jones/Zane company engagement is one of several dance presentations now on sale as part of the complete CAP UCLA 2018–2019 season. Other highlights include Germaine Acogny’s performance of Olivier DuboisMON ÉLUE NOIRE—SACRE #2Jérôme Bel’s GALA, the Quote Unquote Collective’s MOUTHPIECE, Batsheva’s VENEZUELA, and the Merce Cunningham celebration NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS.

Dates and tickets: cap.ucla.edu/calendar

From top: Germaine Acogny in Mon élue noire—Sacre #2, Batsheva Dance Company in Venezuela, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, photograph by Paul B. Goode.

Bill T Jones_Analogy_Dora_PhotobyPaulBGoode