Bill T. Jones

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Continuous Replay : The Photographs of Arnie Zane by Arnie Zane (Photographer), Jonathan Green (Editor), Bill T. Jones, Susan Leigh Foster

Essays by Jonathan Green, Susan Leigh Foster, and Christine Pichini commentary by Bill Bissell, Bill T. Jones, Robert Longo, Philip Sykas, and Lois Welk

Bill T. Jones Profile

Excerpt:

Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is the product of an 11-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane.

The company emerged onto the international scene in 1982 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum (with legendary drummer Max Roach) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Extensive international touring quickly followed.

Since then, the 10-member company has performed its repertory (currently more than 50 works) in 30 countries and more than 100 American cities. It has performed under the aegis of the United States Information Agency in Asia and Southeast Asia. About 100,000 people attend its performances annually around the world...

Bill T. Jones in Conversation with Ann Daly

By Ann Daly

The Long Day's Journey of Bill T. Jones

By Ann Daly

Originally published in the season program called "America Dancing: The Revolution Goes Worldwide," published in 1997 by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Bill T. Jones:  Graduation Speech, 29 May 2000 at Swarthmore College

Excerpt:

Artists are not necessarily nice people. This is true. Artists are often times, excuse the terminology - assholes. Artists are often times people who are very, very angry. They are angry on the Freudian level. They are angry on the level of economics, race, sexual preference. They are railing against things they barely understand. And we hope that these gifted, oftentimes, seductive people have some sort of a "moral compass" we hope.

Phew...

Talking and Listening in Public:  The Critical Dialogue

By Linda Frye Burnham

Excerpt:

The lid blew off the critical community in 1995 when esteemed dance critic Arlene Croce published a piece of criticism in The New Yorker titled "Discussing the Undiscussable." Her article was a refusal to review — or even to attend — a performance of Still/Here, a work by the black, gay, HIV-positive choreographer Bill T. Jones at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Croce objected to the introduction into the performance of audio- and video-tapes of "real" people who were neither dancers nor actors, but people terminally or gravely ill with cancer and AIDS, talking about their own lives. She called it "victim art" that placed itself "beyond criticism" and "unintelligible as theater."

"I can’t review someone I feel sorry for or hopeless about," she said. Their very presence in the work manipulated and intimidated the audience into a position of sympathy and pity, said Croce. Calling such a strategy "intolerably voyeuristic," she went on to attack all forms of "issue-oriented" art. She claimed that advanced culture was being turned into "utilitarian art" by "community outreach," "multiculturalism" and "minority groups," rendering it nothing more than "socially useful."

This essay produced a firestorm...

Names Index:
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