I live with the uneasy feeling that I have been shaped in part as a result of something that was taken from us as a nation. The cynicism and alienation that I struggle with is the result of many incomprehensible factors. Perhaps one of the most important - though remote - might well be the betrayal of Abraham Lincoln's legacy. --Bill T. Jones

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company visits select cities across the country to ask: "Had Lincoln lived, what would we be like today?" During each week-long residency the Company and collaborators host lecture/demonstrations, panel discussions, and masterclasses exploring the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Through workshops, a diverse group of 100 local community members and musicians create and perform a site-specific event with movement, text, and music drawn from the participants' own feelings of a historical figure "hiding in plain sight." Visit the University of Virginia's web archive of the residency at www.100migrations.org.

In Another Evening: I Bow Down, Bill T. Jones reveals how personal stories and historical events converge, in an examination of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of disaster. Known for taking risks on stage, Bill T. Jones continues to push the boundaries of modern dance through unconventional collaborations in the latest incarnation of his evolving Another Evening series. Featuring live music by Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) and the uncompromising sound of the young Bronx-based hardcore band Regain The Heart Condemned, Jones' company erupts from the stage like an unstoppable force of nature.

Today, civil unrest, religious conflict, and natural disaster touch almost everyone, and increasingly the youth of the world face uncertain futures and confusing messages from all sides. Acknowledging the brutally honest quality of youth culture, Jones suggests that disaster can be a powerfully redemptive force. "If disaster if the lifeblood of change, why haven't the changes been made?" intones guest actor Andrea Smith, reminding us that rationality is most often not the guidepost of history.

In Another Evening: I Bow Down, Jones' powerfully skilled dancers move with individualistic purpose and style, while at the same time displaying the ability to dance together in beautifully synchronized unity. As the performance unfolds on stage, the actions of choreographer and company become stories in themselves, as history, life, and art merge into a unified experience. Weaving personal stories together with mythical and historical events reminds us that even if all disasters could be prevented, we would still have our own mortality to face. Yet, while life itself may be temporal, Bill T. Jones asserts through his work that ideas themselves have a life of their own that transcend individual mortality.

Jones' diverse company, an embodiment of the world he wants to live in, sweeps through time and space in the minimalist, dreamlike landscape created by set designer Bjorn G. Amelan and lighting designer Robert Wierzel. Very much in the spirit of late co-founder Arnie Zane, this piece is a inspired by the bold works Jones and Zane began creating over 20 years ago. Their faith in the transformative power of dance - despite the adversity of ignorance, disasters, and personal tragedies that defy rationality - is a testament to the redemptive power of art.

Still/Here (1994)
choreographed by Bill T. Jones

first performed at the Biennale Internationale de la Danse in Lyon, France

music by Kenneth Frazelle (traditionals by Odetta, the Lark String Quartet and Bill Finizio) and Vernon Reid

video art by Gretchen Bender

spoken text by participants of the Survival Workshops and Lawrence Goldhuber

costumes by Liz Prince

lighting by Robert Wierzel

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's 20th Anniversary Celebration, The Phantom Project, is the first of a multi-year effort. It is an attempt to come to grips with the daunting task of representing this Company's creative output over 20 plus years.

"Because our choreographic and theatrical investigation has been broad and evolutionary, any attempt to retrieve a work from the past is like trying to evoke a phantom," says Jones.

Recollection is a constantly elusive process. So much depends on where the choreographer's mind was and what questions were being asked at the time.

"Revival involves even more questions--putting something on and trying it out until one finds a facsimile or place that is personal and representative of what was inside oneself."

Zane and Jones were trying to build something then. Is it ever the same thing now?

Season Highlights

The Phantom Project - 20th Anniversary Season
The season kicks off with 10 performances at The Kitchen in New York City, September 9 - 20, 2003. The Kitchen provides an opportunity to recall Bill and Arnie's seminal early duets and solos, involving extreme intimacy in partnering and talking. Much of the revival work has never been performed by anyone other than Bill and Arnie. Today, the casting ranges from two tall blond women, to two short African American women, to an African American man and a Chinese man. The new readings of these early works make them fresh again and offers the opportunity for a new generation of viewers to experience them. Bill T. Jones will participate in the programs as narrator/performer as he screens and contextualizes various works.

Our Kitchen season also boasts two events in conjunction with the live performances. On Thursday, September 18, journey through the company's vibrant 20-year history with Bill T. Jones and long-time collaborators and supporters at a TV Dinner panel discussion including video screenings and a vegetarian dinner prior to the evening's performance. Fellow panelists include Gregory Bain, Production Manager and Archivist (1982-2003), Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; Elizabeth Zimmer, dance critic, The Village Voice; and Robert Longo, artist. Plus, throughout the month of September The Kitchen Art Gallery will be exhibiting remastered video documentation of Bill and Arnie's early works including Monkey Run Road, Floating the Tongue, and Four Duets found in The Kitchen's prestigious archive.

Then, on February 3 - 7, 2004, four performances at the esteemed Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) represent a different itinerary -- remembering Bill and Arnie's initial invitation there in 1984 when they became part of the first generation of Next Wave Artists. Included on the program at BAM will be The Phantom Project: Still/Here Looking On, a re-examination of Bill's highly controversial Still/Here from 1994 in the context of 30 years of creation, Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger, our latest work, Another Another History of Collage, a reworking of Bill and Arnie's last collaboration, and The Gift/No God Logic, a requiem for four dancers that was one of Arnie's last works.

The celebration expands outside of New York throughout the year, as the Company tours across the country and abroad, including performances in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Texas, Florida, and Ohio.

The anniversary season also pays homage to Arnie's photography with an exhibition of his photographic and magic lantern work at the Paula Cooper Gallery in downtown New York.

first performed at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York

music by Julius Hemphill

text by R. Justice Allen, Ann T. Greene, Jones, Estella Jones, Heidi Latsky, and Soujourner Truth

set/costumes by Huck Snyder

lighting by Robert Wierzel

Black Suzanne (2002) choreographed by Bill T. Jones

first performed Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, IA

Prelude and Scherzo for String Octet, Opus 11 by Dmitri Shostakovich

costumes by Liz Prince

sets by Bjorn Amelan

lighting by Robert Wierzel