Arnie Zane Dance Co to Perform at Jacob's Pillow
BECKET, Mass. — The work of Bill T. Jones, choreographer, Tony Award-winner, director and recipient of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, will be celebrated throughout the Jacob's Pillow 2010 Festival, including performances by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.The Pillow will host a six-performance engagement of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the season-long photography exhibit "Arnie Zane on Bill T. Jones," and a PillowTalk, featuring Jones, who will discuss his long creative and personal partnership with Zane.
"Bill is quite simply one of the greatest artists of our time," said Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Dance executive director. "Fearless in his thinking and aesthetic investigations, he has taken his art, and his audiences along with it, to illuminating places. He will continue to make an enormous contribution to the arts and the Pillow is proud to honor him this season."
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will perform in the Ted Shawn Theatre July 21 through 25. The multi-layered work, "Serenade/The Proposition," was created as part of a trilogy of evening-length dances in celebration of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. It featurs folk and classical music that will be performed live by musicians Jerome Begin, Lisa Komara, and Christopher Antonio William Lancaster. Interspersed among Mozart and traditional American folk music are excerpts from well-known Civil War-era speeches by Abraham Lincoln, abolitionist and social activist Julia Ward Howard, William Walker, Alexander Means, and spoken word ranging from personal anecdotes to lyrics from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
"Serenade/The Proposition" has received numerous accolades since its premiere in 2008. In addition to calling this work "an obliquely powerful history lesson" Claudia La Rocco of the New York Times wrote: "Mr. Jones’ 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. The movement runs cool against the subject matter’s heat."
In addition to "Serenade/The Proposition," Jacob’s Pillow is showing "Arnie Zane on Bill T. Jones," a photography exhibit of images featuring a young Jones by his late partner, Arnie Zane, a provocative photographer, choreographer, and company co-founder. The free exhibit is located in lobby of the Ted Shawn Theatre and is open to the public through Aug. 29.
The partnership of Jones and Zane is also the subject of a PillowTalk on Thursday June 22 at 5 p.m., featuring Jones and Pillow Scholar-in-Residence, Maura Keefe.
Jones was recently honored with the 2010 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award at the Pillow’s Season Opening Gala. The annual award, which supports visionary choreographers, is made possible by a an anonymous donor. Given each year to an exceptional choreographer, the award carries a cash prize of $25,000 to be used by the artist in any way they choose.
