- Byname of:
- William Tass Jones
- Born:
- February 15, 1952, Bunnell, Florida, U.S. (age 74)
- Awards And Honors:
- Tony Awards
- Kennedy Center Honors (2010)
Bill T. Jones
-
Who is Bill T. Jones?
Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952) is an American choreographer and dancer. Jones and Arnie Zane created the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Jones's works often incorporate multimedia and examine autobiographical elements, such as racism and AIDS. After Zane's death, Jones created some of his most powerful works, including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and Still/Here (1994). In 2007, Jones earned a Tony Award for his choreography in Spring Awakening. Jones's trilogy exploring trauma and memory included Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, and Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant. Jones's honors include a MacArthur fellowship (1994), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2003), and a Kennedy Center Honor (2010).
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What kind of dancing and choreography is Bill T. Jones known for?
Bill T. Jones is known for his work in modern dance and choreography that often incorporates multimedia elements like spoken narrative and videotape. His choreography often tests boundaries, addressing subjects such as racism and AIDS, and examines autobiographical elements through movement. Jones won Tony Awards for his choreography in Spring Awakening and Fela!, and his later works include Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray and Story/Time. In the mid-2010s, Jones created a trilogy exploring trauma and memory, and in 2021, he premiered Deep Blue Sea, inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
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What dance company did Bill T. Jones help create?
Bill T. Jones, along with Arnie Zane, created the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Before establishing this company in 1982, Jones and Zane founded the American Dance Asylum in 1973 with Lois Welk and Jill Becker, where they began choreographing works that challenged modern dance conventions.
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How does Bill T. Jones use storytelling in his dances?
Bill T. Jones, an American choreographer and dancer, often incorporates storytelling in his dances through multimedia elements like spoken narrative and videotape. His works frequently explore autobiographical elements, addressing subjects such as racism and AIDS. Examples include Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and Still/Here (1994). Jones also created a trilogy in the mid-2010s exploring trauma and memory, including Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, about his mother-in-law, and Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, about his nephew.
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What important themes does Bill T. Jones explore in his choreography?
Bill T. Jones, in collaboration with Arnie Zane, significantly impacted modern dance by exploring themes of racism and AIDS. Jones's choreography often incorporates multimedia elements and autobiographical elements. Following Zane's death from AIDS, Jones created powerful works such as Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land and Still/Here. His later works included Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray, commemorating Abraham Lincoln's birth, and a trilogy exploring trauma and memory: Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, and Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant.
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How has Bill T. Jones influenced modern dance and the wider arts community?
Bill T. Jones has significantly impacted modern dance and the arts community through his choreography and exploration of challenging themes. With Arnie Zane, he formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, which tested modern dance boundaries by partnering male dancers and addressing topics like racism and AIDS.
After Zane's death, Jones created powerful works such as Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land and Still/Here, and he won Tony Awards for his choreography in Spring Awakening and Fela!. Jones's work often incorporates multimedia and autobiographical elements, and his trilogy Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, and Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant explores trauma and memory.
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Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952, Bunnell, Florida, U.S.) is an American choreographer and dancer who, with Arnie Zane, created the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Jones was the 10th of 12 children of migrant farmworkers. His parents moved from rural Florida when he was three years old, and he grew up in Wayland, New York, just south of Rochester. He attended the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he became interested in movement and dance. There he met Arnie Zane, who became his partner in business and in life. With Lois Welk and Jill Becker, the two men formed the American Dance Asylum in 1973 and started choreographing works that tested the boundaries of modern dance. They scandalized some audiences by partnering male dancers, and they addressed subjects such as racism and AIDS. Much of their work incorporated multimedia elements such as spoken narrative and videotape, and they examined through movement autobiographical elements of their lives.
In 1982 Jones and Zane formed Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company, later called the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. (The company’s name remained the same even after Zane’s death from AIDS in 1988.) The book Body Against Body: The Dance and Other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1989), which the two men cowrote, examines their work together. In the wake of Zane’s death and the death of another member of the company, Jones (who was also diagnosed as HIV-positive) created some of his most powerful works, including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and Still/Here (1994). In 2011 the company merged with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts, for which Jones served as executive artistic director; the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company continued to perform under its name.
In 2007 Jones earned a Tony Award for best choreography for his work in the musical Spring Awakening. Based on Frühlings Erwachen (1891), a tragedy by German dramatist Frank Wedekind, the musical dealt with adolescent sexual awakening and the damage that can be caused by a repressive and hypocritical society. Jones later cowrote the book for, choreographed, and directed the musical Fela! (2008), about the life of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. For his exuberant choreography, he won a second Tony Award. Jones’s later work included Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray(2009), a commission for the Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, Illinois, commemorating the bicentennial of U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s birth; and Story/Time (2014), a piece inspired by both composer John Cage’s Indeterminacy (1958) and choreographer Merce Cunningham’s How To Kick, Pass, Fall, and Run (1965).
In the mid-2010s Jones embarked on a trilogy exploring trauma and memory, which comprised Analogy/Dora: Tramontane (2015), a piece about Jones’s mother-in-law, a French-Jewish nurse who resisted the Nazis and their collaborators in Vichy France; Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist (2016), a work considering the downfall of Jones’s nephew as he went from a scholarship student to a life of drugs to prison and paralysis; and Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant (2017), a dance inspired by W.G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants. In 2021 Jones premiered Deep Blue Sea, which was inspired by both Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851) and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963).
Jones received a number of honours throughout his career, including a MacArthur fellowship (1994), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2003), and a Kennedy Center Honor (2010). His memoir, Last Night on Earth (1995; with Peggy Gillespie), is a compelling narrative of his life that reveals issues that animated and motivated him. Jones’s other published works included Dance (with Susan Kuklin, 1998), a children’s book introducing the basic concepts of dance, and Story/Time: The Life of an Idea (2014), wherein Jones reflected on his life and work.