Bill T.
Jones
Dancer and ChoreographerValley Cottage, NY
2007 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by Eileen Harris Norton / The Peter Norton Family Foundation.
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Bill T. Jones is a choreographer, dancer, and cofounder of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance Company. He began his training at the State University of New York at Binghamton, studying classical ballet and modern dance. There he met his future partner, Arnie Zane, and they started their company in 1982. In their performances they unabashedly confronted issues of race and sexuality and collaborated with visualists and musicians. Zane died from complications of AIDS in 1982. Jones has choreographed more than one hundred dances for his company as well as for the Alvin Ailey American dance Theater, Boston Ballet, and Lyon Opera Ballet, among others. He has received numerous prestigious honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994 and a Tony Award in 2006 for his choreography for the playSpring Awakening.
Portrait photo courtesy Kevin Fitzsimons, courtesy Wexner Center for the Arts.
As I Was Saying, 2007, directed by Bill T. Jones (dancers: Leah Cox and Donald Shorter); photo by Al Zanyk, courtesy Wexner Center for the Arts