Kennedy Center honoree and two-time Tony winner Bill T. Jones begins his company’s inaugural New York Live Arts season this week
BODY AGAINST BODY
New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
September 16-24, $32-$40 ($15 on 9/20)
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
Last December was a big month for two-time Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones (Spring Awakening, Fela!). The Florida-born dance legend, who formed the highly influential Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982, was awarded the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor, which he called “one of the highest moments in my life,” and he also teamed up with Dance Theater Workshop to create the artist-led New York Live Arts, which is dedicated to producing, presenting, and educating in its mission “to become a place for dance that is vital to the fabric of social and cultural life in New York, America, and beyond.”
This week Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance kicks off the inaugural New York Live Arts season with the exciting Body Against Body program: “Monkey Run Road” (1979), “Continuous Replay” (1977/1991), and “Valley Cottage: A Study” (1980) will be performed September 16, 18, 21, 23, and 25, with “Duet x 2” (1982), “Continuous Replay,” and “Blauvelt Mountain” (1980) scheduled for September 17, 20, 22, and 24. “Valley Cottage” and “Monkey Run Road” are being performed in New York for the first time since their premieres. “Continuous Replay” will also feature live music played by John Oswald or DJ Spooky as well as a rotating cast of guest performers, including Matthew Rushing from Alvin Ailey, Janet Eilber and Blakeley White-McGuire from Martha Graham, Arthur Aviles from Typical Theater, Elena Demyanenko from Trisha Brown, Jennifer Goggans from Merce Cunningham, Megan Sprenger from mvworks, and Richard Move from MoveOpolis! Jones will take part in a preshow talk with Marcia B. Siegel on September 21 and a postshow discussion with Janet Wong, DTW/NYLA artistic director Carla Peterson, and the nine-member Bill T. Jones company on September 23. The premiere gala takes place September 15. Amid this flurry of activity, Jones was able to squeeze in some time to answer a few questions from twi-ny.
twi-ny: Last December, when the merger between Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop was announced, you said, “We are doing something that supposedly can’t be done.” Now you are about to present your first season together. How did you, in fact, get it done?
Bill T. Jones: At the core of this merger was collaboration, and that’s exactly how this inaugural season came together. Carla Peterson spearheaded the curation process, and our talented staff and board of directors have worked tirelessly to bring ideas and resources to the table to make this institution a leader in the performing arts community and a home for movement-based artists. I am very excited about the artists on our season and am proud of the new programs we’re building.
New York Live Arts season kicks off with Bill T. Jones’s “Body Against Body” program
twi-ny: For your first series of performances at NYLA, you are revisiting some of your most iconic works, including the third iteration of “Continuous Replay.” Why did you choose these particular works for this inaugural season?
BTJ: Body Against Body is a program that the company premiered earlier this year (at the ICA/Boston) and we’re now touring it extensively in the upcoming season. It only seemed fitting that we would open the inaugural season of New York Live Arts with this program: It consists of some of the earliest pieces that Arnie Zane and I created together — two of which [“Valley Cottage” and “Blauvelt Mountain”] we premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in the early ’80s.
The newest reconstruction on the program, which will premiere at New York Live Arts, is “Valley Cottage: A Study.” This work has not been seen since Arnie and I first performed it in 1981. I think collectively these seminal works give audience members a glimpse of my roots as a choreographer while also acknowledging New Yorks Live Arts’ foundation, rooted in both my company’s and Dance Theater Workshop’s history and legacy. I like to think of it as a looking back to look forward.