Bill T.

Jones
William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones (born
February 15, 1952), is an American choreographer, Bill T. Jones
director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The
company's home in Manhattan. Jones is Artistic
Director of New York Live Arts, whose activities
encompass an annual presenting season together with
allied education programming and services for artists.
Independently of New York Live Arts and his dance
company, Jones has choreographed for major
performing arts ensembles, contributed to Broadway
and other theatrical productions, and collaborated on
projects with a range of fellow artists. Jones has been
called "one of the most notable, recognized modern-
dance choreographers and directors of our time."[2]

Jones in Springfield, Illinois

Early life and education Born William Tass Jones
February 15, 1952
Bill T. Jones was born in Bunnell, Florida, the tenth of Bunnell, Florida, U.S.
12 children born to Estella (née Edwards) and Education
Binghamton University
Augustus Jones.[3] His parents were migrant farm
Occupation(s) Choreographer, dancer
workers and later worked in factories.[4] In 1955, when
Jones was three, the family relocated to Wayland, New Spouse(s) Arnie Zane; Bjorn G. Amelan[1]
York. Jones was a track star in high school and also
participated in drama and debate. After his high school graduation in 1970, he began to attend
Binghamton University via a special admissions program for underprivileged students.[5] At Binghamton,
he shifted his focus to dance. In an interview, Jones noted: "[Binghamton] was where I first took classes
in west African and African-Caribbean dancing. Soon I started skipping track practice to go to those
classes. It immediately appealed to me. It was an environment that was not about competition."[5] Jones's
dance studies at Binghamton also encompassed ballet and modern dance.[6]

Career

Early years
During his 1971 freshman year at Binghamton, Jones met and fell in love with Arnie Zane, a 1970
graduate of the university who was living in the area honing his skills as a photographer. The personal
connection they forged evolved into a personal and professional relationship that lasted until Zane's death
from AIDS in 1988.[7]: 17 About a year after meeting, the pair spent a year in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
On returning, Jones and Zane connected with dancer Lois Welk, who introduced them to contact
improvisation, an emerging dance technique popularized by Steve Paxton that emphasizes intertwining
partnering and shifts of weight and balance between partners.[8]: 116 With Welk and another dancer, Jill
Becker, they formed American Dance Asylum (ADA) in 1974. ADA was organized as a collective and
performed nationally and internationally while also offering classes and presenting performances at its
space in Binghamton. While the members of ADA generally choreographed their own works, they used a
collaborative development process in which each member informed the activities of the others.[7]: 59
Jones created a number of solo pieces during this period and was invited to present in New York City
beginning in 1976, performing at The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, and the Clark Center, among
other venues.[8]: 138

Jones's works during this period, such as Floating the Tongue (1979) and Everybody Works/All Beasts
Count (1975), combined his elegant style of movement with spoken passages that explored and
improvised on his reactions and memories evoked by the dancing, ranging from episodes in his life to
digressions on social issues.[8]: 134–36 Dance historian Susan Foster has characterized these works as
using "the resonances between movement and speech to show the very mechanics of meaning-making
and to deepen viewers' perceptions of the number of ways a movement can mean."[9]: 198

In 1979, Jones and Zane felt that their collaboration with Welk and Becker had reached its conclusion.
They were also interested in living in an area more supportive of both the art they were making and their
identity as an interracial gay couple. They moved to the New York area in late 1979, settling in Rockland
County, where they soon bought a house.[8]: 133–34

The physical contrast between Jones (tall, Black, gracefully athletic) and Zane (short, White, sharply
moving), together with contact improvisation techniques of intertwining and lifting formed the basis of
many of the pair's dances during this period. The works they created together fused Jones's interest in
movement and speech with Zane's visual sensibility rooted in his work as a photographer.[10]: 66 Their
duets featured film projections, stop-and-go movement and framing drawn from still photography,
singing, and spoken dialogue.[11]: 429 At the forefront of their works was their political and social focus,
and the unusual—for the period—pairing of two male dancers and a frank acknowledgement of their
personal relationship.[12] A trilogy of duets the pair created during this time, consisting of Blauvelt
Mountain (1980), Monkey Run Road (1979) and Valley Cottage (1981), firmly established their
reputations as important new choreographers.[7]: 62

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company

From the mid 1970’s until 1981, Jones and Zane toured the world dancing sexually provocative duets.
Jones had also danced solos. In 1982, the pair formed the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company,
recruiting a troupe of individualistic and nontraditional performers who represented different body sizes,
shapes, and colors.” “Jones, a choreographic provocateur, presents his ideas about identity, art, race,
sexuality, nudity, power, censorship, homophobia, and AIDS-as-chemical-warfare with a streetwise, in-
your-face attitude.” Works such as Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and
Still/Here are some of his most thought-provoking works.[13]

Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin

Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promise Land premiered in 1990, two years after Jones lost his
life partner, Arnie Zane.[14] Throughout his career, Jones’ sense of alienation from society and its
constructs and politics regarding race, gender, and sexuality inform his choreographies, and this work is
no different. [14] In particular, Jones said that Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promise Land is
about how “we” (performers, choreographers, and audience) can navigate through differences to arrive at
a commonality.[15] Jones's work contains four acts; the first three engage with his and the performers'
personal histories and their interfacing with social histories through images, citations, and references, and
the last segment engages with the philosophy of liberation, the definition of home, and commonality
amongst differences.

Act 1: The Cabin examines and rearranges the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The
Cabin provides a revisionist history of the character of Uncle Tom through citations (both personal and
historic). Jones uses images from his personal history of people being punished to portray violence and
death.[16] Jones acquired these images through his and his mother’s memories; he noticed, in retrospect,
that stories about whipping that his mother told him resonated with him and influenced the whipping
choreography.[15]

Rather than revising history, Act 2: Eliza engages with the counterfactual history of what would have
been true for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s character Eliza if circumstances were different. Jones explored
these “what ifs” through movements and the identities of his performers.[16] He created five Elizas, each
with unique movement profiles informed by Jones’s experience and the experiences of the dancer
representing each Eliza, which allow the audience to infer the range of emotional states and desires
among five versions of the same character.[16] The first represents a historical Eliza accompanied by
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” speech. The dancer's movements reference Jones’ memory of his
grandmother resting her hands on a hoe; her intermittent joy is captured in the sway of her hips.[15] [16]
The second is a modern-day Eliza who engages with the “evils of sexism”; her tight fists portray her
anger.[15] [16] The third controls men, but her personal fears remain inside her; her strength manifests
through an uncompromising spine.[15] [16] The fourth Eliza lacks autonomy, shown through the limp arms
in her choreography; she needs her identity awarded back.[15] [16] A man dances the last Eliza in a mini
skirt and heels; he intensely invites the audience to make assumptions about racial and gender identity.[16]
Jones engaged with far-reaching social predicaments and personalized ones that he and his dancers
experienced to signal the “what-ifs” of Stowe’s Eliza.

Jones described Act 3: The Supper as a dialogue with his mother’s faith.[15] The Last Supper was a
prominent image in the houses that Jones grew up in. Further, Jones recognizes it as a shared experience
in poor homes in general. He deconstructs the Last Supper image and exposes all the questions it does not
answer through a chaotic tableau that ends in a rap about justice.[15]

The final section, The Promise Land, was the most controversial at the time, and it wasn't always
performed, but when it was, local community members were cast in the production. Nudity is the central
image of this section; at the beginning, a nude body starts as one painful and undesirable thing, and by the
end, the audience can see nudity as a commonality among all people. This found commonality is not a
resolution but rather stillness and peace.[15]
Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promise Land successfully and uncomfortably confronts the trials
and tribulations of those outside the typical constructs of society, leaving people with the question, how
many groups of people and experiences can be taken under the saying “free at last?” (one last reference to
the Black American experience).[15]

Still/Here controversy
Although Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land was one of Jones's largest and most
political productions, the 1995 New York premiere of Still/Here led to a great deal of controversy and
discussion. Still/Here is about dying, based on videotaped statements of people suffering from deadly
diseases such as AIDS and cancer.[17] It features a video score by artist Gretchen Bender based on
excerpts from interviews with people who had received such diagnoses, together with a commissioned
musical score, spoken text and movement.[18] This work raises the question of whether art should be
political. Most critical comments were favorable for the production, especially since many dancers were
affected by AIDS.[17] Still/Here was well received on its 1994 international tour. Newsweek called it "a
work so original and profound that its place among the landmarks of 20th-century dance seems
ensured."[19] However, Arlene Croce, dance critic for The New Yorker, wrote in her article "Discussing
the Undiscussable" a sharp negative critic of artists who present themselves as victims. Croce was so
disgusted by "victim art" that she refused to see the production. Croce blamed politics for the sensation of
victim art. "The arts bureaucracy in this country, which includes government and private-funding
agencies, has in recent years demonstrated a blatant bias for utilitarian art-art that justifies the
bureaucracy's existence by being socially useful."[17]

Croce's essay generated considerable discussion, pro and con. The next issue of the New Yorker (January
30, 1995) featured four pages of letters about the article from prominent cultural figures such as Robert
Brustein, bell hooks, Hilton Kramer, Camille Paglia and Tony Kushner. In dissent, critic bell hooks
observed: "To write so contemptuously about a work one has not seen is an awesome flaunting of
privilege—a testimony to the reality that there is no marginalized group or individual powerful enough to
silence or suppress reactionary voices. Ms. Croce's article is not courageous or daring, precisely because
it merely mirrors the ruling political mood of our time."[20] Many other liberals, such as Richard
Goldstein from the Village Voice also sharply criticized Croce. Deborah Jowitt, a dance critic for the
Village Voice wrote "It's ironic…that Croce, so firmly opposed to the politicization of art, chose to turn
her own critical essay into a political statement by declining to see the work at hand.” Yet other critics
chose not to see this work either because they have been unimpressed with Jones choreography in his past
productions or because works based on racism, sexism, AIDS have become predictable. Either way,
Croce's article is successful at bringing attention to the politicization of the American Arts. Croce argues
for "the autonomy of art" or "art for art's sake". However, “opposing the politicization of art is now taken
to be a political act”. .[17]. The debate broadened to the national press. Author Joyce Carol Oates noted in
The New York Times: "As with the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial of several years ago, the article has raised
crucial questions about esthetics and morality, about the role of politics in art and about the role of the
professional critic in assessing art that integrates 'real' people and events in an esthetic framework."[21]
The coverage brought Jones to wider attention. In 2016, Newsweek wrote, "Jones is probably best known
outside of dance circles for his 1994 work Still/Here."[22]

Other collaborators
Creating more than 100 works for his own company, Jones has also choreographed for Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, AXIS Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet
and Diversions Dance Company, among others. In 1995, Jones 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.

In 1989, Bill T. Jones choreographed D-Man in the Waters.[23] The AIDS epidemic was at an all-time
high and the arts community was being greatly affected by it. After the death of company member,
Demian Acquavella, Bill T. Jones decided to choreograph this piece in his honor. He raised awareness
about the horrors of the disease by highlighting Acquavella's absence in the piece. The piece feature a lot
of lifting to symbolize the unity that Bill T. Jones wanted to achieve as a society. Men lifting men, women
lifting women, and women lifting men. D-Man in the Waters is a beautiful and moving piece of art that
uses movement and lack thereof to portray the horrors of the AIDS epidemic, the loss of those affected by
it, and the desperation to come together and find a solution.[24]

In 1990, Jones choreographed Sir Michael Tippett’s New Year under the direction of Sir Peter Hall for the
Houston Grand Opera and the Glyndebourne Opera Festival. He conceived, co-directed and
choreographed Mother of Three Sons, which was performed at the Munich Biennale, New York City
Opera, and the Houston Grand Opera. He also directed Lost in the Stars for the Boston Lyric Opera.
Jones's theater involvement includes co-directing Perfect Courage with his sister and prolific
performance artist, 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.

Jones also collaborated with artist Keith Haring in 1982 to create a series of both performance and visual
arts together.

Broadway and off-Broadway

In 2005, Jones choreographed the New York Theatre Workshop production of The Seven, a musical by
Will Power based on Seven Against Thebes by the classical Greek playwright Aeschylus. The Seven
transposed the original work to a modern urban setting and employed a range of musical styles to create
what one reviewer called, "a strange new hybrid: a hip-hop musical comedy-tragedy."[25] The play was
recognized with three Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Choreography, given
to Jones.[26]

Jones was choreographer for the Broadway premiere of the 2006 rock musical Spring Awakening,
developed by composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater, and directed by Michael Mayer. The play
is based on an 1891 German work that explores the tumult of teenage sexuality. Spring Awakening was
widely acclaimed at its premiere and later won eight 2007 Tony Awards, in addition to a range of other
recognitions. Jones was recipient of the 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography.[27]

Jones is co-creator, director and choreographer of the musical Fela!, which ran off-Broadway in 2008 and
opened on Broadway in 2009. Jones's collaborators on the project were Jim Lewis and Stephen Hendel.
The play is based on events in the life of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti and is inspired by Fela:
This Bitch of a Life, a 1982 authorized biography of Kuti by Carlos Moore.[28] The Broadway
presentation won three Tony Awards, including Best Choreography.[29]
In 2010, he became a Kennedy Center Honoree. Introduced by 1996 Kennedy Center Honoree Edward
Albee and a speech by Claire Danes, the performance was "I Sing The Body Electric," a poem written by
Walt Whitman in 1856. Also honored that year were talk show host/actress Oprah Winfrey,
lyricist/composer Jerry Herman, country singer/songwriter Merle Haggard, and
singer/songwriter/musician Paul McCartney.

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an event widely considered a watershed
moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named him one of the Pride50 "trailblazing
individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all
queer people".[30]

Opera
In 2017, Jones served as director, choreographer, and dramaturge for the world premiere of We Shall Not
Be Moved written by Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and Librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The work
was commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and was listed by the New York Times as one of the best
classical performances of 2017.[31]

Personal life
Jones is married to Bjorn Amelan, a French national who was raised in Haifa, Israel and several countries
in Europe.[32] The two have been together since 1993.[32] Amelan was the romantic and business partner
of noted fashion designer Patrick Kelly from 1983 until Kelly's death from AIDS complications in
1990.[33] In addition to pursuing his own work as a visual artist, Amelan is Creative Director of the Bill T.
Jones /Arnie Zane Dance Company and has designed many of the company's sets since the mid-
1990s.[34] The World War II experiences of Amelan's mother, Dora Amelan, are the focus of Jones's work
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane (2015).[1]

Jones and Amelan live in Rockland County, New York, just north of New York City, in a house purchased
in 1980 by Jones and Arnie Zane.[35] Despite Jones's long association with New York's performing arts
and cultural life, he has never resided in the city.[8]: 144

One of Jones's sisters, Rhodessa Jones, is a noted San Francisco performance artist, prison-arts educator
and Co-Artistic Director of the performance ensemble Cultural Odyssey.[36] Jones's nephew, Lance
Briggs, is the subject of two works performed by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company,
Analogy/Lance (2016) and Letter to My Nephew (2017). Both explore the trajectory of Briggs's life,
which descended from promise as a dancer, model and songwriter to involvement with drugs and
prostitution, an AIDS diagnosis and becoming paraplegic.[37]

Selected works
Jones has choreographed more than 120 documented works. The following is a representative selection
highlighting collaborations with or commissions from notable companies or artists.[38]

Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane

Pas de Deux for Two (1973)
Across the Street (1975)
Monkey Run Road (1979)
Blauvelt Mountain (1980)
Valley Cottage (1981)
Rotary Action (2020)
Intuitive Momentum (1983) [Music, Max Roach; decor, Robert Longo]
Secret Pastures (1984) [Decor, Keith Haring; costumes, Willi Smith]
The Animal Trilogy (1986)
The History of Collage (1988)

Bill T. Jones
Everybody Works/All Beasts Count (1975)
Holzer Duet... Truisms (1985) [Text by Jenny Holzer]
Virgil Thompson Etudes (1986) [Costumes, Bill Katz & Louise Nevelson]
D-Man in the Waters (1989)
It Takes Two (1989)
Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990)
Absence (1990)
Broken Wedding (1992)
Still/Here (1994)
We Set Out Early...Visibility Was Poor (1997)
Black Suzanne (2002)
Chapel/Chapter (2006)
A Quarreling Pair (2006)
Serenade/The Proposition (2008)
Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray (2009)
Story/Time (2014)

Commissions and collaborations

Fever Swamp (1983) [Commission from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater]
Mother of Three Sons (1991) [Commission from New York City Opera
Broken Wedding (1992) [Commission from Boston Ballet]
Degga (1995) [Collaboration with Max Roach and Toni Morrison]
24 Images per Second (1995) [Commission from Lyon Opera Ballet]
How! Do! We! Do! (1999) [Collaboration with Jessye Norman]li
Bill and Laurie: About Five Rounds (1996) [Collaboration with Laurie Anderson]
 A Rite (2013) [Collaboration with Anne Bogart/SITI Company]

Major awards and honors

1986, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, Freedom of Information
(Choreography/Creator; w/ Arnie Zane)[39]
1989, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, D-Man in the Waters
(Choreography/Creator)[39]
1991, Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award[40]
2001, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, The Breathing Show & The Table
Project (Choreography/Creator; w/ Bjorn Amelan)[39]
2003, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize[41]
2005, Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in
Choreography[42]
2005, The Wexner Prize[43]
2006, Lucille Lortell Award, The Seven (Outstanding Choreography)[44]
2007, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, Chapel/ Chapter
(Choreography/Creator)[39]
2007, Off-Broadway Theater "Obie" Award, Spring Awakening (Music: Choreography)[45]
2007, Tony Award, Spring Awakening (Best Choreography)
2007, United States Artists Fellowship[46]
2008, The MacArthur Fellowship
2009, Lucille Lortell Award, Fela! (Outstanding Musical)[47]
2010, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, République française
2010, Tony Award, Fela! (Best Choreography)
2010, Kennedy Center Honors
2011, The YoungArts Arison Award[48]
2013, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, D-Man in the Waters
(Outstanding Revival)[39]
2013, The National Medal of Arts
2014, The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award[49]
2014, Washington University International Humanities Prize[50]
2018, The James Robert Brudner Memorial Prize at Yale University[51]

Filmography

Film appearances
1986: The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July
1994: Black Is... Black Ain't
2001: Free to Dance
2004: Bill T. Jones: Dancing to the Promised Land[52]
2008: The Black List: Volume One
 2008: The Universe of Keith Haring
2008: Bill T Jones – Solos
2021: Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters[23]

See also
Freda Rosen
LGBT culture in New York City
List of LGBT people from New York City
NYC Pride March

References
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ps://[Link]/1995/02/19/arts/[Link]).
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External links
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. ([Link] official
website
Bill T. Jones ([Link] at the Internet Broadway
Database
Bill T. Jones ([Link] at IMDb
Archival footage of Bill T. Jones dancing Three Dances in 2000 at Jacob's Pillow Dance
Festival ([Link]
 Bill T. Jones TED Talk 2015 ([Link]
he_cellist_and_a_moment_of_creative_magic)

Further reading
Jonathan Green (ed.). Continuous Replay: The Photographs of Arnie Zane. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-262-57127-2.
Bill T. Jones with Peggy Gillespie. Last Night on Earth. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
ISBN 978-0-679-43926-4.
Bill T. Jones and Susan Kuklin. Dance. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 1997.
ISBN 978-0-7868-0362-0.
Bill T. Jones. Story/Time: The Life of an Idea. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
ISBN 978-0-691-16270-6.
Ariel Nereson. "Bill T. Jones", in 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, Jimmy A. Noriega and
Jordan Schildcrout (eds), Routledge, 2022. ISBN 978-1-032-06796-4.
Walker Art Center. Art Performs Life : Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones.
Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1998. ISBN 978-0-935640-56-4.
Elizabeth Zimmer and Susan Quasha (eds). Body Against Body: The Dance and Other
Collaborations of Bill T. Jones & Arnie Zane. Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press. ISBN 978-
0-88268-064-4.

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