Choreographer Bill T. Jones Talks ANALOGY/DORA: TRAMONTANE at Museum of Jewish Heritage Tonight

Renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones is joined by his 95-year-old mother-in-law Dora Amelan, and her son Bjorn Amelan for a discussion about Dora's gripping story of survival during the Holocaust and how this became the inspiration for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's recent work, Analogy/Dora: Tramontane. This program takes place tonight, November 4, 2015, at 7:00 p.m. at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, 36 Battery Place in Lower Manhattan.

Julie Burstein (Spark: How Creativity Works) is the interviewer. Short video clips (approximately 4 clips) of the dance piece will be shown during the talk.

This program is funded through a generous gift from the David Berg Foundation. The Museum's public programs are made possible through a generous gift from Mrs. Lily Safra. The Museum receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Part One of Analogy: A Trilogy is based on an oral history Bill T. Jones conducted with 95-year old Dora Amelan, a French Jewish nurse and social worker and survivor of World War II. Mimicking the interview format between Jones and Dora, the story unfolds in multiple levels of transformation. The threads of Dora's narrative sometimes parallel the choreography, sometimes overlap and sometimes exist in an enigmatic counterpoint. The nine dancers of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company move seamlessly between dancing, speaking and singing in the evening length work. Analogy/Dora: Tramontane is a meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience while suggesting the amorphous nature of memory.

The piece was commissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State University; Co-Commissioned by Dancers' Workshop and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Over the past 33 years the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries on every major continent. In 2011, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company merged with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts of which Bill T. Jones is the Artistic Director.

The repertory of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft and includes musically driven works as well as works using a variety of texts. Some of its most celebrated creations are evening length works including Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990, Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994, Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early... Visibility Was Poor (1996, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, IA); You Walk? (2000, European Capital of Culture 2000, Bolgna, Italy); Blind Date (2006, Peak Performances at Montclair State University); Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL); Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy); Story/Time (2012, Peak Performances); and A Rite (2013, Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill). The Company is also currently touring Body Against Body an intimate and focused collection of duet works drawn from the Company's 33-year history.

BILL T. JONES (Artistic Director/Co-Founder/Choreographer: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; Artistic Director: New York Live Arts) is the recipient of the 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award; the 2013 National Medal of Arts; the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors; a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography of the critically acclaimed FELA!; a 2007 Tony Award, 2007 Obie Award, and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for Spring Awakening; the 2010 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award; the 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship; the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for The Seven; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2005 Harlem Renaissance Award; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1994 MacArthur "Genius" Award. In 2010, Mr. Jones was recognized as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2000, The Dance Heritage Coalition named Mr. Jones "An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure."

Mr. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982. He has created more than 140 works for his company. Mr. Jones is the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation's dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating. For more information, visit www.newyorklivearts.org.