Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's NEW YORK LIVE ARTS to Launch Tour at Festival de Marseille

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, New York Live Arts' resident dance company, today announced the touring programs and productions for the 2013-2014 season, continuing the Company's 30th anniversary celebrations. The Company will perform in 13 cities in three countries over the next 10 months, making their debut at a number of venues across the U.S. and abroad. The tour kicks off with the Company's debut at the Festival de Marseille, in Marseille, France, on June 19 with a residency and performances of Play and Play: an Evening of Movement and Music. Other touring programs of the 2013-2014 season include A Rite, with Anne Bogart's SITI Company; Story/Time; Body Against Body; and /Time: Study I, a new site-specific work.

"The vision that Arnie Zane and I created more than 30 years ago continues today with great momentum. Working with Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong and our Creative Director Bjorn Amelan, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company continues to bring new and restaged works to audiences who are both familiar and unfamiliar with our repertory" said Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts. "Particularly, we look forward to unveiling A Rite to audiences in New York City and San Francisco. The process of creating A Rite with Anne Bogart and her SITI company was both creatively challenging and exhilarating, and we're thrilled to expose it to an ever-growing audience."

In celebration of the Company's three decades of creativity, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts(YBCA) will mount an exhibition highlighting significant works by visual artists and designers that have played integral roles in the Company's works since the early 1980s. On view in various spaces throughout the Center from September 20 to November 3, the featured multi-media pieces served as the primary interactive elements that influenced the choreographic and creative vocabulary of certain works. Notable works in the exhibition are Gretchen Bender's (1951 - 2004) videos for the dance Still/Here (1994); Keith Haring's backdrop design, Garden of Radio Delightscreated for Secret Pastures (1984); and Huck Snyder's table, chairs and masks used in Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990).

From October 3 through 5, the Company will present the New York City premiere of A Rite, the collaborative dance-theater work by Anne Bogart's SITI Company and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, at Brooklyn Academy of Music's (BAM) Next Wave Festival. Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of its "The Rite of Spring at One Hundred" centennial festival, A Rite explores the impact of Stravinsky's revolutionary piece of music and imagines the consequence of hearing it played for the very first time. These performances at BAM also mark 30 years since the Company debuted at BAM during the inaugural Next Wave Festival in 1983 with Intuitive Momentum, a work choreographed by Arnie Zane in collaboration with Jones.

"As we embark on this next chapter in the life of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, it's important to pay respect to the presenters, audiences, supporters and artists who have served as pillars for the Company over the years," said Jean Davidson, CEO of New York Live Arts. "The Company would not be where it is today without the sustained support of these individuals and organizations. We are thankful that, with their support, we can continually expose audiences world-wide to both the new and restaged works of Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane and their collaborators."

Following the performances at BAM, the Company will travel to San Francisco to begin its residency at YBCA. On October 8 and 9, YCBA will present the world premiere of /Time: Study Iat CounterPULSE, a space for grassroots arts and culture. Performed for two nights only to a limited audience of 99, the unique, site-specific work continues the Company's exploration of the ideas and concepts promulgated by John Cage's Indeterminacy, building off the tools developed during the 2012 creation of Story/Time. /Time: Study I also features Ted Coffey's often minimal and shifting score, using time as the unifying element and offering another perspective on Cage's methods. Following the CounterPULSE performances, A Ritewill have its West Coast premiere atYCBA's Lam Research Theater from October 11 through 13.

Other highlights of the 2013-2014 season include the Company's return to numerous celebrated U.S. arts institutions including performances of Story/Time, the "gorgeously danced...dance-theater roller coaster with surprises at every corner" (San Francisco Chronicle), at Columbia College Dance Center (CCDC) in Chicago, IL from October 24 through 26, 2013 and at theInstitute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, MA from February 21 through 23, 2014. The Company will also make its debut at the Warsaw Opera House in Warsaw, Poland with Body Against Body on November 3. A complete touring schedule for 2013-2014 can be found below.

The Company will continue to expand its dynamic education program, led by New York Live Arts Education Director and former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member Leah Cox. The 2013-2014 academic year marks the Company's fifth year in partnership with the Bard College Dance Program, where Company teaching artists and New York Live Arts guest artists teach an innovative curriculum designed to cultivate the next generation of dancemakers and creative thinkers. For the 2013-2014 academic year, Cox, Jennifer Nugent, Vanessa Anspaugh and JesseZaritt will teach contemporary technique to beginning- through advanced-level dance students. Cox and current Company member Nugent will share the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's approach to movement, while former Studio Series artist Zaritt and former New York Live Arts commissioned artist Anspaugh will share their unique movement styles and practices.Additionally, students at university and college dance programs throughout the U.S. will reconstruct significant Company works for performance. The Company also conducts intensive workshops for professional and pre-professional dancers and produces a broad range of discussion events at home and on the road.

A major highlight of the 2013-2014 reconstruction projects is the first-ever complete reconstruction of Love Re-Defined at the American Dance Festival (ADF), through their "Forces of Dance" initiative. Other reconstruction projects include: Spent Days Out Yonder at Montclair State University; Part 1 of D-Man in the Waters at Muhlenberg College and Southern Methodist University; and excerpts of Love Re-Defined at Princeton University.

Over the past 30 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 Executive 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 PromisedLand (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, HancherAuditorium, 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 ofmovement and music, two repertory programs featuring music-inspired works; Body AgainstBody, an intimate and focused collection of duet works drawn from the Company's 30-year history; A Rite, a dance-theater collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company andStory/Time, a work inspired by John Cage's Indeterminacy.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company consists of dancers Antonio Brown, Rena Butler,Talli Jackson, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leonard, Jr., I-Ling Liu, Erick Montes Chavero, Jennifer Nugent, 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.

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