Dance Choreographer to Discuss Latest Work
WILLIAMSTOWN – Bill T. Jones, artistic director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, will discuss his new work "Chapel/Chapter" on Jan. 25 at 4:30 p.m. on the CenterStage at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance. The event is free and open to the public."Chapel/Chapter" will be presented on the MainStage at ’62 Center on Saturday, Feb. 9, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10/$3 with valid student ID.
Jones will speaking about the new work, its creation process, where it came from, and where it's going. He will also speak about site-specific work, how "Chapel/Chapter" was created in a site-specific space, and the process of adaptation to "conventional" theaters. Additionally, he may also touch on the just completed "A Quarreling Pair."
A recipient of a 2007 Tony Award, Jones also won a 2007 Obie Award and a 1994 MacArthur Genius Award.He has created more than 100 works for his own company and has also choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Axis Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Diversions Dance Company, among others. In 1995, he directed and performed in a collaborative work with Toni Morrison and Max Roach, Degga, at Alice Tully Hall, commissioned by Lincoln Center's Serious Fun Festival. His collaboration with Jessye Norman, "How! Do! We! Do!" premiered at New York's City Center in 1999.
He has directed and choreographed a number of other performances in theater and on television. The 1999 Blackside documentary "I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Arts," profiled Jones' work. In 1995, Pantheon Books published his memoirs, "Last Night on Earth."
"Rarely has [Jones] been better able to sublimate his wide-ranging political, social and moral concerns into art. Rarely has the strength of that art made his vision express itself more purely," wrote John Rockwell of The New York Times.
For more information and tickets, go to 62center.williams.edu.
