TITAS to Present Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Jan. 8 and 9
Work
Celebrates Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln
edited
by Madelyn Miller, the TravelLady
 On
Friday, January 8 and Saturday, January 9, TITAS will present the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and
Bill Winspear Opera House. The company will perform Serenade/The
Proposition, the first of a suite of works honoring the 2009 Abraham Lincoln
bicentennial.
Serenade/The Proposition is a lively, colorful rumination on the nature of
history. The refrain “It could be said that history is...” runs through the
piece and asks the question of our connection to history, or lack thereof.
Video projections fill an iconic set of movable columns that evoke the
architecture of history: the White House, the Parthenon, or the ballroom of
an elegant plantation parlor.
The
spare staging is filled by a cast of fierce dancers in beautifully
deconstructed costumes performing flowing movement that assembles into
moments of still portrait-like postcards from the past. The original score
draws from Mozart’s Requiem, Battle Hymn of the Republic and Dixie to create
a contemporary, playful, musical collage for cello, piano, and soprano. The
original music was composed and arranged by Jerome Begin, Lisa Komara and
Christopher Antonio William Lancaster, and will be performed live.
Spoken text frames the piece, drawn from the writings and speeches of
Abraham Lincoln, interspersed with biographical elements from Mr. Jones’
life, and delivered by actor Jamyl Dobson.
JPG The
piece premiered at the 2008 American Dance Festival and had its New York
premiere at the Joyce Theater, the work’s lead commissioner.
Serenade/The Proposition is now on tour throughout the U.S. and will
travel to Europe in Spring 2010. According to a review in The New York
Times, “Mr. Jones's choreography flows through this dance-theater edifice
like water finding its way through a winding stone wall. Formal and often
understated, phrases full of scything limbs, dipping torsos and elegantly
minimal partnering periodically assemble into tableaus reminiscent of
daguerreotype portraits.”
Tickets
for this performance range from $19 to $127. Performances on both Friday,
January 8 and Saturday, January 9 begin at 8 p.m.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance
Company tickets can be purchased online at
www.attpac.org (now with improved ticketing functionality); or via phone
at 214.880.0202. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the AT&T
Performing Arts Center Box Office at the Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora
Street (Monday through Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm; Sunday 11 am – 4 pm).
More
celebrations of Lincoln bicentennial
The
celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln continues at
the AT&T Performing Arts Center on February 25 with another TITAS
performance: Daniel Bernard Roumain’s (DBR) Mediation for the People of
Lincoln, a musical setting of a play that explores an imagined conversation
between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, and the political relationship
between England, North America and Haiti. The work of Bill T. Jones returns
to the Center in March, when the Lexus Broadway Series presents Spring
Awakening. Mr. Jones’ choreography for the musical earned him a Tony® Award
in 2007.
About Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was founded after 11 years of collaboration
during which Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988) redefined the duet
form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form, and social commentary that
would change the face of American dance. It emerged onto the international
scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum with legendary
drummer Max Roach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the
10-member company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries
including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, France,
Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa and the UK. Today, the
Harlem-based Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and
powerful forces in the modern dance world.
The work
of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company explores both musically driven
works and works using a wide variety of texts (such as Reading, Mercy and
the Artificial Nigger based on Flannery O’Connor’s 1955 short story, The
Artificial Nigger, and A Quarreling Pair based on Jane Bowles’ puppet play
of the same name). The repertoire is widely varied in its subject matter,
visual imagery, and stylistic approach to movement, voice, and stagecraft.
The company has been acknowledged for its intensely collaborative method of
creation that has included diverse artists such as Keith Haring, The Orion
String Quartet, the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Cassandra Wilson,
Fado singer Misia, Jazz pianist Fred Hersch, Ross Bleckner, Jenny Holzer,
Robert Longo, Julius Hemphill, and Peteris Vasks, among others. The
collaborations of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with visual artists
were the subject of Art Performs Life (1998), a groundbreaking exhibition at
the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
The
Company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and
Performance Awards (“Bessie”) for Chapel/Chapter at Harlem Stage (2006), The
Table Project (2001), D-Man in the Waters (2001 and 1989), musical scoring
and costume design for Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land
(1990), and for the 1986 Joyce Theater Season. The company was nominated for
the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for “outstanding achievement in dance and
best new dance production” for We Set Out Early... Visibility was Poor.
Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has distinguished itself through its teaching
and performing in various universities, festivals and under the aegis of
government agencies such as the US Information Agency (in Eastern Europe,
Asia and South East Asia). Audiences of approximately 50,000 to 100,000
annually see the company across the country and around the world.
ABOUT BILL T. JONES
Bill T.
Jones is a 2007 Tony Award winner and the recipient of the 2007 Obie Award
and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for
his choreography for Spring Awakening, the recipient of the 2007 USA Eileen
Harris Norton Fellowship, the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding
Choreography for The Seven, the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance
Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the prestigious 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 which
recipients are considered trailblazers who have redefined their art and
reshaped 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
addition to creating more than 100 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, Axis Dance Company, Boston
Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berkshire Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and
Diversions Dance Company, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s The Flight
Project. He has also received numerous commissions to create new works for
his own company, including premieres for the American Dance Festival, the
Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and for St. Luke’s
Chamber Orchestra. He has directed and choreographed for theatre and opera,
most recently choreographing off-Broadway for the New York Theatre
Workshop’s production of The Seven for which he was awarded the 2006 Lucille
Lortel Award for Best Choreography, for the Broadway musical Spring
Awakening, and directing and choreographing for Fela! , anoff-Broadway
musical he co-conceived with Jim Lewis. Fela! opened on Broadway at the
Eugene O’Neil Theatre in November 2009.
UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE AT&T PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
TITAS:
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Jan. 8-9
Winspear
Opera House
Lexus
Broadway Series: August: Osage County
Jan. 12-24
Winspear
Opera House
Dallas
Theater Center: Give It Up!
Jan. 15-Feb. 14
Wyly
Theatre
About
the AT&T Performing Arts Center
The AT&T
Performing Arts Center, a new multi-venue Center for music, opera, theatre
and dance opens in October 2009, completing the 30-year vision of the Dallas
Arts District. Located at 2403 Flora Street, the Center serves as a gateway
from downtown Dallas’s business center to the Dallas Arts District.
Featuring multiple state-of-the-art facilities that are woven together by a
ten-acre urban park, which creates a dynamic cultural destination that is
unparalleled in the world, the Center includes:
The
Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, designed by Foster + Partners in a
modern horseshoe configuration, seats 2,200 (with capacity up to 2,300).
The Dee
and Charles Wyly Theatre designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (partner
in charge) and Rem Koolhaas, seats up to 600 and uses a superfly system to
rapidly change the performance hall’s configuration to proscenium, thrust or
flat floor, depending on the nature of the performance.
The
Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park, designed by Michel Desvigne, is a
lush urban park that unifies the AT&T PAC’s venues with the Arts District
and surrounding neighborhoods of Dallas.
The
completely new Annette Strauss Artist Square, designed by Foster + Partners,
is the Center’s outdoor entertainment venue. (Opening 2010.)
The City
Performance Hall, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, provides main
stage production space for many of Dallas’ smaller performing arts
organizations. (Opening 2011.)
Two
underground parking areas that accommodate more than 850 vehicles.
The
Dallas Fort Worth Lexus Dealer Association is the title sponsor of the
Center’s Lexus Broadway Series. Lexus is the official vehicle of the Center
and its resident companies, the official valet sponsor and the naming rights
holder for the Center’s two underground parking areas.
More
information on the AT&T Performing Arts Center is available at
www.attpac.org.
Madelyn
Miller is a travel and food writer who loves dance. She knows she will enjoy
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company even more at the Winspear Opera
House. Read her stories on
www.travellady.com,
www.carladynews.com, www.yogayaya.com,
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