Bill T. Jones, Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin… the un-Ailey? 

Floor 3, Theater

Saturday, November 16 at 3 pm, 7 pm

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Memory Piece is a series of solo performances reflecting on influential moments and figures throughout the illustrious career of Bill T. Jones. Jones describes himself as someone who went in a different direction than Alvin Ailey. This iteration, Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin… the un-Ailey?, will welcome audiences into a rare and intimate space built from words, movement, and music.  

The 7 pm performance will be followed by a conversation between Jones, artist Glenn Ligon, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs and Curator of Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Conceived, Written and Performed by Bill T. Jones
Lighting Design by Robert Wierzel
Sound Design by James Bennett
Projection by Janet Wong

Rehearsal footage from Alvin Ailey’s 1983 Precipice, courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Public Library.

Produced by New York Live Arts.

Bill T. Jones  is a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer. The Artistic Director and co-founder of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, Jones has received major honors ranging from the Human Rights Campaign’s 2016 Visibility Award and a 2013 National Medal of Arts to a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1994 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. Jones was honored with the 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2010, inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009, and named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into Broadway theater resulted in a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed FELA!, a musical he co-wrote directed and choreographed. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography for Spring Awakening as well as an Obie Award for the show’s 2006 off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway production of The Seven earned him a 2006 Lucille Lortel Award.

Jones 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, hereturned to SUNY, where he became co-founder of the American Dance Asylum in 1973. In 1982 he formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (then called Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company) with his late partner, Arnie Zane. He is currently Artistic Director of New York Lives Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting, and educating.

Jones’s interest in new media and digital technology has resulted in collaborations with the team of Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, and Marc Downie, now known as OpenEnded Group. Their collaborations include After Ghostcatching, the tenth anniversary re-imagining of Ghostcatching (2010, SITE Sante Fe Eighth International Biennial); 22 (2004, Arizona State University’s Institute for Studies In The Arts and Technology); and Ghostcatching – A Virtual Dance Installation (1999, The Cooper Union, New York).

He has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, Columbia College, Skidmore College, the Juilliard School, Swarthmore College, and the State University of New York at Binghamton Distinguished Alumni Award.

In addition to his company and Broadway work, Jones also choreographed Sir Michael Tippet’s New Year (1990) for Houston Grand Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. His Mother of Three Sons 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. Additional theater projects include co-directing Perfect Courage with Rhodessa Jones for Festival 2000 in 1990. In 1994, he directed Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

To learn more about New York Live Arts, Bill's creative projects and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, please visit www.newyorklivearts.org.