The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will soon celebrate its 25th Anniversary season.  The 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 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.

The work of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company freely 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).  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 artists as diverse 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 Hamphill, and Peteris Vasks, among others.  The collaborations of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with visual artists was the subject of Art Performs Life (1998), a groundbreaking exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.

Some of its most celebrated creations are evening length works including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990 – premiered as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994 – premiered at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early, Visibility Was Poor (1996 – premiered at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, IA, nominated for London’s Laurence Olivier Award); You Walk? (2000 – premiered at Bologna, Italy, European Capital of Culture 2000) and Blind Date (2006 – premiered at Montclair State University’s Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, NJ). The ongoing, site- specific, Another Evening is now in its sixth incarnation as Another Evening: I Bow Down.

The Company has also produced two evenings centered around Bill T. Jones’ solo performance: The Breathing Show (1999—Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City) and As I Was Saying… (2005 – premiered at the Walker Art Center’s William and Nadine McGuire Theater).

The Company has been featured in many publications.  Perhaps one of the most in depth examinations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane’s collaborations can be found in Body Against Body: The Dance and other Collaborations of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1989  - Station Hill Press) edited by Elizabeth Zimmer.

The Company has received numerous awards, including NY Dance and Performance Awards  (“Bessies”) for the 1986 Joyce Theater Season, D-Man in the Waters (1989 and 1991), The Table Project  (2001) and for music scoring and costumes for Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990). 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.

In 2002 the Company celebrated its landmark twentieth anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with 37 guest artists including Susan Sarandon, Cassandra Wilson and Vernon Reid. The Phantom Project: The 20th Season presented a diverse repertoire of over 15 revivals and new works.