ABSTRACT
Bill T. Jones was the tenth of twelve children in a migrant family that settled in the small upstate town of Wayland, New York. In the 1970s he attended the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, where he studied ballet and modern dance and met his partner, the photographer Arnie Zane. They connected with Lois Welk through a contact improvisation workshop she taught at SUNY Brockport and went on to work together as the American Dance Asylum in Binghamton. Jones and Zane began making duets that drew on Jones’s supple physicality and Zane’s visual acuity. Their pieces played off their shared intimacy and striking physical contrasts: black and white, tall and short, fluid and jagged. In 1976 Jones started to show his work in New York City, and in 1978 he and Zane moved to be near the city. They formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982, which Jones has continued to direct since Zane’s death in 1988.
