The award-winning choreographer, MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of the Arts recipient, Bill T. Jones brings his company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company to SUNY Binghamton to present his mesmerizing Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music on September 24, 7:30PM at the Anderson Center at SUNY Binghamton. Binghamton is Jones' alma mater where he studied classical ballet and modern dance and started his first dance company in 1973. For information and tickets, visit binghamton.edu.
Known for its powerful and varied subject matter, Play and Play applies Jones' inventive choreography to some of the most important Western musical works of our time. Performed with live music, the program includes Spent Days Out Yonder, Continuous Replay and D-Man in the Waters and features compositions by Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn, performed live by local musicians (Uli Speth, Noemi Miloradovic , Sonsoles Llodrà, Matteo Longhi , Cassie Sulbarán, Dana Huyge , Zachary Sweet and Heidi Hoffman).
Spent Days Out Yonder (2000) is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, set to the second movement of Mozart's String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The movement is firmly rooted in Jones' elegant, weighted movement vocabulary, challenging dancers to move with ease, efficiency and physical honesty through the sublime score.
Continuous Replay (1977, revised 1991) reflects Arnie Zane's interests in photography and film. Originally choreographed by Zane in 1977 as a solo titled Hand Dance and later revised as a group work by Bill T. Jones in 1991, Continuous Replay is based on 45 precise gestures accumulated in space and time, cunningly complicated by discrete movement events. A newly commissioned score for string octet by Jerome Begin combines motifs from Beethoven's first and last string quartets with recorded sounds to create a surprising soundscape.
Bill T. Jones' joyful tour-de-force, D-Man in the Waters (1989), is a true classic of modern dance and a two-time New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Award-winning work. It is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit that guides audiences through loss, hope and triumph. Set to Mendelssohn'sOctet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20 the work is one of the finest examples of the post-modern aesthetic and was featured in PBS's landmark film Dancing in the Light - Six Dances by African-American Choreographers. Reconstruction support for D-Man in the Waters was provided by the American Dance Festival.
Bill T. Jones is one of the world's foremost multi-talented artists with an illustrious and award-winning career as a dancer, choreographer, theatre director and writer. He has received major honors ranging from a 1994 MacArthur Genius Award to a 2010 Kennedy Center Honor to a 2013 National Medal of Arts. Jones was recognized as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2010, inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named "An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure" by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His creations on Broadway include the highly acclaimed "Spring Awakening" and "FELA!", for which he won 2007 and 2010 Tony Awards for Best Choreography.
New York Live Arts serves as home base for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and is the company's sole producer, providing support and the environment to originate innovative and challenging new work for the Company and New York's creative community. Located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and active engagement with the social, political and cultural currents of our time.
New York Live Arts produces and presents dance, music and theater performances in its 20,000 square-foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square-foot studios. New York Live Arts offers an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of artists.
The creation of new work by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is made possible by the company's Partners in Creation: Anne Delaney, Zoe Eskin, Eleanor Friedman and Carol Tolan.
Support is provided by Con Edison, Creative Capital, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the Ford Foundation, Goethe-Institut, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust, the Jerome Foundation, the Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Performance Network, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Shubert Foundation and the Theatre Development Fund.
New York Live Arts is supported by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council with special thanks to Council Member Corey Johnson, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
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