Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company & Loyola Marymount University Launch New Partnership

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, New York Live Arts' Resident Dance Company, today announced the launch of a new partnership with Loyola Marymount University (LMU). The partnership with the Los Angeles based university marks the first of its kind, adding to the Company's existing collegiate education programs. Spanning a total of four years, the partnership will bring the Company's works and their pedagogical and performative philosophy to LMU's campus and the Los Angeles area.

"I'm thrilled, honored and moved to start this partnership with LMU, and couldn't be more pleased to have Rosalynde Leblanc at the helm," said Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and New York Live Arts. "Throughout the Company's life, it has been important to stay connected with Company alumni, and I am certain that Rosalynde will thoughtfully impart the Company's philosophy to LMU's students. Rosalynde Leblanc's commitment to the company's legacy and dialogue with the ever shifting landscape of contemporary dance has been exemplary. Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong and I have always acknowledged the value of sharing the Company's work, style and philosophy to collegiate dancers around the country. Exciting things are happening in the dance world on the west coast, and I'm pleased that this partnership will allow us to be involved in that movement in an ongoing fashion."

The partnership will educate and enrich LMU's dance students through a number of modalities. LeBlanc, with access to Company archives, will have the opportunity to teach portions of the Company's repertory within courses that study Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane and their works. A week-long teaching intensive with a current Company member will be incorporated into the academic calendar beginning in 2015-2016. An additional week-long intensive, with two Company members, will be featured in August 2015, and again in the summer of 2017. Various complete works from the Company's repertory-including Continuous Replay, Love Redefined and the first movement from D-Man in the Waters-will be taught to and performed by LMU students over the course of the partnership. Lastly, LMU students will receive exclusive access to guest lectures and master classes by Jones and the Company during their tours to the Los Angeles area.

"The first time I saw the work of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, dance changed from a hobby to a profession for me. So there is nothing more meaningful than bringing to my students the work that I fell in love with, and that changed my life," said Rosalynde Leblanc, Assistant Professor of Dance at Loyola Marymount University. "I met Bill when I was nineteen-the average age of my students now-so I can relate to the physical, emotional and intellectual challenges they will encounter in learning these dances. I am delighted to be able to usher them through those challenges, similarly to how Bill ushered me through them."
LMU Professor Rosalynde Leblanc was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from 1993 - 1999. Leblanc has been a fervent advocate for the dissemination of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's work and movement style over the years. She is currently producing D-Man, a documentary film about Demian "D-Man" Acquavella and the eponymous dance by Jones, which mirrored Acquavella's bold and spirited struggle for survival.

ABOUT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Located between the Pacific Ocean and downtown Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a comprehensive university offering 60 major and 55 minor undergraduate degrees and programs. The Graduate Division offers 39 master's degree programs, one education doctorate, one juris doctorate, one doctorate of juridical science and 10 credential/authorization programs. Founded in 1911, LMU is ranked third in "Best Regional Universities/West" by U.S. News & World Report. LMU is the largest Jesuit Catholic university for undergraduates in the Southwest with more than 6,000 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate and law students.

ABOUT ROSALYND LEBLANC

Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo has a B.F.A. in Dance from Purchase College and an M.F.A. from Hollins University. She has been dancing professionally all over the world since 1993. She was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (1993-1999) and Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project (1999-2002). She has also danced with The Metropolitan Opera and at the Salzburg Opera Festival. Ms. LeBlanc has had several articles published in Dance Magazine and Europe's Ballettanz. Currently she is on faculty at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where she is choreographing her own work, restaging the work of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, and producing the documentary film entitled "D-Man."

ABOUT THE BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY & BILL T. JONES

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 currently touring Play and Play: an evening of movement and music, two repertory programs featuring music-inspired works; Body Against Body, an intimate and focused collection of duet works drawn from the Company's 32-year history; A Rite, a dance-theater collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company and Story/Time, a work inspired by John Cage'sIndeterminacy.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company consists of dancers Antonio Brown, Rena Butler, Talli Jackson, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Cain Coleman, Jr., I-Ling Liu, Erick Montes Chavero, Joseph Poulson and Jenna Riegel. Bjorn Amelan serves as the Creative Director for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Janet Wong serves as Associate Artistic Director.

Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of New York Live Arts and Artistic Director/Co-Founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, is a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer who has received major honors ranging from the 2013 National Medal of Arts to a 1994 MacArthur "Genius" Award and Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. Honored with the 2014 Doris Duke Award, Jones was recognized as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2010, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named "An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure" by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into Broadway theater resulted in a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed FELA!, the new musical co-conceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by Mr. Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography in Spring Awakening as well as an Obie Award for the show's 2006 off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway production of The Seven earned him a 2006 Lucille Lortel Award.

Mr. Jones 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. In 1982 he formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (then called Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company) with his late partner, Arnie Zane.

His work in dance has been recognized with the 2010 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1993 Dance Magazine Award. His additional awards include the Harlem Renaissance Award in 2005; the Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award in 1991; multiple New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for his works The Table Project (2001), The Breathing Show (2001), D-Man in the Waters (1989) and the Company's groundbreaking season at the Joyce Theater (1986). In 1980, 1981 and 1982, Mr. Jones was the recipient of Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1979 he was granted the Creative Artists Public Service Award in Choreography.

Mr. Jones has been featured in numerous television, radio, film and documentary programs over the years. In 2013, Jones was profiled by PBS-affiliate Thirteen/NYC-ARTS and featured on NPR's popular Talk of the Nation program and the acclaimed Made HERE documentary series.In recent years, he has also beenprofiled on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show and the Colbert Report. Also in 2010, he was featured in HBO's documentary series MASTERCLASS, which follows notable artists as they mentor aspiring young artists. In 2009, Mr. Jones appeared on one of the final episodes of Bill Moyers Journal, discussing his Lincoln suite of works. He was also one of 22 prominent black Americans featured in the HBO documentary The Black List in 2008. In 2004, ARTE France and Bel Air Media produced Bill T. Jones-Solos, highlighting three of his iconic solos from a cinematic point of view. The making of Still/Here was the subject of a documentary by Bill Moyers and David Grubin entitled Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers in 1997. Additional television credits include telecasts of his works Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1992) and Fever Swamp (1985) on PBS's "Great Performances" Series. In 2001, D-Man in the Waters was broadcast on the Emmy-winning documentary Free to Dance.

Bill T. Jones's interest in new media and digital technology has resulted in collaborations with the team of Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar and Marc Downie, now known as OpenEnded Group.The collaborations include After Ghostcatching - the 10th Anniversary re-imagining of Ghostcatching (2010, SITE Sante Fe Eighth International Biennial); 22(2004, Arizona State University's Institute for Studies In The Arts and Technology, Tempe, AZ); and Ghostcatching - A Virtual Dance Installation (1999, Cooper Union, New York, NY).
He has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, Columbia College, Skidmore College, the Juilliard School, Swarthmore College and the State University of New York at Binghamton Distinguished Alumni Award, where he began his dance training with studies in classical ballet and modern dance.

Mr. Jones's memoir, Last Night on Earth, was published by Pantheon Books in 1995. An in-depth look at the work of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane can be found in Body Against Body: The Dance and Other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, published by Station Hill Press in 1989. Hyperion Books published Dance, a children's book written by Bill T. Jones and photographer Susan Kuklin in 1998. Mr. Jones contributed to Continuous Replay: The Photography of Arnie Zane, published by MIT Press in 1999.
In addition to his Company and Broadway work, Mr. Jones also choreographed Sir Michael Tippet's New Year (1990) for Houston Grand Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. His Mother of Three Sons was performed at the Munich Biennale, New York City Opera and the Houston Grand Opera. Mr. Jones also directed Lost in the Stars for the Boston Lyric Opera. Additional theater projects include co-directing Perfect Courage with Rhodessa Jones for Festival 2000 in 1990. In 1994, he directed Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain for The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN.

ABOUT ARNIE ZANE

Arnie Zane (1948-1988) was a native New Yorker born in the Bronx and educated at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton. In 1971, Mr. Zane and Bill T. Jones began their long collaboration in choreography and in 1973 formed the American Dance Asylum in Binghamton with Lois Welk. Mr. Zane's first recognition in the arts came as a photographer when he received a Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS) Fellowship in 1973. Mr. Zane was the recipient of a second CAPS Fellowship in 1981 for choreography, as well as two Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1983 and 1984). In 1980, Mr. Zane was co-recipient, with Mr. Jones, of the German Critics Award for his work, Blauvelt Mountain. Rotary Action, a duet with Mr. Jones, was filmed for television, co-produced by WGBH-TV Boston and Channel 4 in London. Continuous Replay: The Photographs of Arnie Zane was published by MIT Press in April 1999.

ABOUT NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
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 times. At the center of this identity is Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director, a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer.

We commission, produce and present performances in our 20,000 square foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square foot studios that can be combined into one large studio. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, provides an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of artists.

Funding Support
Major support for New York Live Arts is provided by: The Brownstone Foundation; Con Edison; The Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Ford Foundation; The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; French American Cultural Exchange (FACE); The Howard Gilman Foundation; The Grand Marnier Foundation; the Harkness Foundation for Dance; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Mertz Gilmore Foundation; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts; the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation; The Jerome Robbins Foundation; The Scherman Foundation; The Shubert Foundation. New York Live Arts is supported by public funds administered by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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