DALLAS (December 16, 2009) – On Friday, January 8 and Saturday, January 9, TITAS will present the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. The company will perform Serenade/The Proposition, the first of a suite of works honoring the 2009 Abraham Lincoln bicentennial.
Serenade/The Proposition is a lively, colorful rumination on the nature of history. The refrain “It could be said that history is...” runs through the piece and asks the question of our connection to history, or lack thereof. Video projections fill an iconic set of movable columns that evoke the architecture of history: the White House, the Parthenon, or the ballroom of an elegant plantation parlor. The spare staging is filled by a cast of fierce dancers in beautifully deconstructed costumes performing flowing movement that assembles into moments of still portrait-like postcards from the past. The original score draws from Mozart’s Requiem, Battle Hymn of the Republic and Dixie to create a contemporary, playful, musical collage for cello, piano, and soprano. The original music was composed and arranged by Jerome Begin, Lisa Komara and Christopher Antonio William Lancaster, and will be performed live. Spoken text frames the piece, drawn from the writings and speeches of Abraham Lincoln, interspersed with biographical elements from Mr. Jones’ life, and delivered by actor Jamyl Dobson.
The piece premiered at the 2008 American Dance Festival and had its New York premiere at the Joyce Theater, the work’s lead commissioner. Serenade/The Proposition is now on tour throughout the U.S. and will travel to Europe in Spring 2010. According to a review in The New York Times, “Mr. Jones's choreography flows through this dance-theater edifice like water finding its way through a winding stone wall. Formal and often understated, phrases full of scything limbs, dipping torsos and elegantly minimal partnering periodically assemble into tableaus reminiscent of daguerreotype portraits.”
Tickets for this performance range from $19 to $127. Performances on both Friday, January 8 and Saturday, January 9 begin at 8 p.m. Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company tickets can be purchased online at www.attpac.org (now with improved ticketing functionality); or via phone at 214.880.0202. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Box Office at the Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora Street (Monday through Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm; Sunday 11 am – 4 pm).
The celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln continues at the AT&T Performing Arts Center on February 25 with another TITAS performance: Daniel Bernard Roumain’s (DBR) Mediation for the People of Lincoln, a musical setting of a play that explores an imagined conversation between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, and the political relationship between England, North America and Haiti. The work of Bill T. Jones returns to the Center in March, when the Lexus Broadway Series presents Spring Awakening. Mr. Jones’ choreography for the musical earned him a Tony® Award in 2007.
ABOUT BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was founded after 11 years of collaboration during which Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988) redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form, and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. It emerged onto the international scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum with legendary drummer Max Roach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the 10-member company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa and the UK. Today, the Harlem-based Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world.
The work of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company explores both musically driven works and works using a wide variety of texts (such as Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger based on Flannery O’Connor’s 1955 short story, The Artificial Nigger, and A Quarreling Pair based on Jane Bowles’ puppet play of the same name). The repertoire is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery, and stylistic approach to movement, voice, and stagecraft. The company has been acknowledged for its intensely collaborative method of creation that has included diverse artists such as Keith Haring, The Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Cassandra Wilson, Fado singer Misia, Jazz pianist Fred Hersch, Ross Bleckner, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Julius Hemphill, and Peteris Vasks, among others. The collaborations of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with visual artists were the subject of Art Performs Life (1998), a groundbreaking exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
The Company has received numerous awards, including New York Dance and Performance Awards (“Bessie”) for Chapel/Chapter at Harlem Stage (2006), The Table Project (2001), D-Man in the Waters (2001 and 1989), musical scoring and costume design for Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1990), and for the 1986 Joyce Theater Season. The company was nominated for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for “outstanding achievement in dance and best new dance production” for We Set Out Early... Visibility was Poor.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has distinguished itself through its teaching and performing in various universities, festivals and under the aegis of government agencies such as the US Information Agency (in Eastern Europe, Asia and South East Asia). Audiences of approximately 50,000 to 100,000 annually see the company across the country and around the world.
ABOUT BILL T. JONES
Bill T. Jones is a 2007 Tony Award winner and the recipient of the 2007 Obie Award and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for Spring Awakening, the recipient of the 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship, the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for The Seven, the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the prestigious 2005 Wexner Prize, and the Aaron Davis Hall Harlem Renaissance Award. He is also a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient in 1994, named one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000, and was awarded The 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for which recipients are considered trailblazers who have redefined their art and reshaped the cultural landscape. He 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. Before forming Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982, Mr. Jones choreographed and performed nationally and internationally as a soloist and duet company with his late partner, Arnie Zane.
In addition to creating more than 100 works for his own company, Mr. Jones has received many commissions to create dances for modern and ballet companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Axis Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berkshire Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Diversions Dance Company, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s The Flight Project. He has also received numerous commissions to create new works for his own company, including premieres for the American Dance Festival, the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and for St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. He has directed and choreographed for theatre and opera, most recently choreographing off-Broadway for the New York Theatre Workshop’s production of The Seven for which he was awarded the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Choreography, for the Broadway musical Spring Awakening, and directing and choreographing for Fela! , anoff-Broadway musical he co-conceived with Jim Lewis. Fela! opened on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neil Theatre in November 2009.
UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE AT&T PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
(Through January 31)
Lexus Broadway Series: South Pacific Dec. 15 – Jan. 3
Winspear Opera House
Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra: A Night at the Rock Opera Dec. 29- Jan. 2
Wyly Theatre
Brinker International Forum: Paul Nicklen Jan. 6
Winspear Opera House
TITAS: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Jan. 8-9
Winspear Opera House
Lexus Broadway Series: August: Osage County Jan. 12-24
Winspear Opera House
Dallas Theater Center: Give It Up! Jan. 15-Feb. 14
Wyly Theatre
About the AT&T Performing Arts Center:
The AT&T Performing Arts Center, a new multi-venue Center for music, opera, theatre and dance will open in October 2009, completing the 25-year vision of the Dallas Arts District. The Center will provide multi-state-of-the-art facilities woven together by an urban park covering more than ten acres to create a dynamic cultural destination that will be unparalleled in the world. The Center will feature the following:
- The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, designed in a modern horseshoe configuration, will seat 2,200 (with capacity up to 2,300), designed by Foster + Partners.
- The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre will serve as a gateway to the Dallas Arts District from the downtown Dallas business center and will seat 600, designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (partner in charge) and Rem Koolhaas.
- The completely new Annette Strauss Artist Square will be the Center’s outdoor entertainment venue, designed by Foster + Partners.
- The City Performance Hall will provide main stage production space for many of Dallas’ smaller performing arts organizations, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
- The Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park will unify the venues within a lush urban oasis and will create a dynamic cultural destination in downtown Dallas, designed by Michel Desvigne.
- Two underground parking areas that will accommodate more than 850 vehicles.
The Dallas Fort Worth Lexus Dealer Association is the title sponsor of the Center’s Lexus Broadway Series, the official vehicle of the Center and its resident companies, the official valet sponsor and the naming rights holder for the Center’s two underground parking areas. More information on the AT&T Performing Arts Center is available at www.attpac.org.
Contact:
Maria May
AT&T Performing Arts Center
214.978.2834
maria.may@attpac.org