Becket Mass: Jacob's Pillow to Present Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company
Summer Dance Season Starts on June 23
By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 04, 2007
http://www.jacobspillow.org
http://www.billtjones.org
While Jacob's Pillow Dance normally announces its summer schedule in February, for the first time, Executive Director, Ella Baff, has released information on a very special two week residence and performances by the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company which will perform "Chapel/ Chapter" a work which premiered during December, 2006 at Harlem Stage. This is the first time that it will be seen at the world renowned Berkshire venue.
Adding this special residence is a part of the ongoing dialogue about extending the "Shoulder Season" in the Berkshires beyond the usual high season that runs from July Fourth through Labor Day Weekend. During the busy summer months there is the maximum impact of tourism in Western Massachusetts. The dialogue about extending the season is partly economic to bring much needed additional revenue to the region as well as aesthetic. The Berkshires are particularly rich in world class arts organizations including Tanglewood for classical music and Jacob's Pillow and its leadership in the field of dance.
For the past few years Jacob's Pillow has extended the season into the fall with a weekend of dance in collaboration with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. This fall the Karole Armitage Company performed to great critical acclaim. Previously Bill T. Jones appeared in this Shoulder Season at Mass MoCA. What follows is the press release from Jacob's Pillow.
Nov 29, 2007 (Berkshires, MA) – Jacob's Pillow Dance makes an unprecedented early announcement that Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company performs in the 2008 Festival Season in the Doris Duke Studio Theatre with the acclaimed Chapel/Chapter, performed in-the-round, its original stage setting. John Rockwell of the New York Times called this work, "about the most affecting, the most disturbing, the most powerful and the most compassionate…dance I have seen from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company….Chapel/Chapter is a riveting experience…the visceral impact of the piece is inescapable." Chapel/Chapter will run for a special two-week engagement, with performances taking place during the weeks of June 23 and June 30, 2008.
Executive Director Ella Baff made the unusual decision to have the production for a two-week run as one of the special events of the 2008 Festival. She comments, "Bill T. Jones is one the greatest artists of our time. He is, piece after piece, unpredictably original, authentic, and delivers on so many levels – from purely aesthetic pleasure to thought-provoking and emotional experience. Chapel/Chapter stayed with me for a long time after I first saw it. The live music, the intense dancing, stage design and dramaturgy, all make it one of the most complete performance experiences I've had in a long time."
Chapel/Chapter is a collage of three stories explored episodically: a man's murder of a family of four, a father who kills his daughter, and an early morning incident involving two eleven-year old boys at summer camp. Elements of the individual stories or "chapters" are repeated and brought into conversation with each other. By challenging audiences to engage on intellectual and emotional levels, the piece aims to draw them into an intimate exchange with the company. Jones sees Chapel/Chapter in its present form as the beginning of an investigation. He comments, "How can this event suggest the uneasy distance our mediatized era helps create between the passive observers we are and the disturbing, sometimes incomprehensible 'news items' we encounter every day?"
Performed in-the-round, as it will be presented at Jacob's Pillow, Chapel/Chapter is at its most intimate. Although it has been performed in a proscenium format, Jones and set designer Bjorn Amelan originally created the work in-the-round with special consideration for the impact of such a setting on the audience experience. This setting creates an inclusive and powerful experience for the audience. Amelan's set design creates a majestic space, the shape of which mimics the nave of a cathedral, and with the use of projections and lighting, portrays elements of the stories such as a hopscotch board and the shadows of hundreds of migrating birds. The unique capabilities of the Doris Duke Studio Theatre, the Pillow's most flexible performance theatre, have transformed it for many non-proscenium style pieces. For example, the audience seating was arranged to form two parallel banks flanking the performance area for the company of Dutch artist Beppie Blankert in 2000, and when Compagnie Felix Ruckert of Berlin performed in the same space in 2003, audience members were invited to sit in inflatable armchairs and beds ranged around a central area.
Under Executive Director Ella Baff , one of Jacob's Pillow's programming initiatives is to present as much as possible live rather than recorded music with dance performances. Nearly half of the music in the performances of the 2007 75th Anniversary Season was performed live. A rare occurrence in concert dance across the nation, the score of original music for Chapel/Chapter will be performed live at Jacob's Pillow. Principal composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, whose music company is known as DBR, together with contributions from "voicestrumentalist," guitarist, and vocal percussionist Lipbone Redding, classical soprano Alicia Hall Moran, and cellist and "music-mixer" Christopher Lancaster, have created a score which is integral and essential to the piece. One can hear in the music liturgical influence, as well as many minor tones, and intense, driving undercurrents. Haitian-American Roumain, an award-winning, notable innovator in the contemporary music scene, is known for his groundbreaking fusion of classically-driven sounds with a myriad of other influences and styles, and continues in his ongoing collaborations with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The Chapel/Chapter score is infused with liturgical influences, as well as many minor tones, and intense, driving undercurrents.
Co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Dancer Jones has seen recent success on Broadway, winning the 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography for the original musical Spring Awakening. An especially distinct innovator, Jones has choreographed and performed to rave reviews throughout his quarter-century career. This ground-breaking choreographer, with a unique blend of dance theater and concern for social responsibility reflected in his work, has created over 100 pieces for his internationally acclaimed company, as well as works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Axis Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Diversions Dance Company, among others. Other awards include the 2005 Wexner Prize, the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, a 2005 Harlem Renaissance Award, and the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Writes Rachel Howard of the San Francisco Chronicle, "Some choreographers are born dancemakers whose genius manifests in the steps themselves. And some choreographers are geniuses who just happen to choose dance for their primary mode of expression. Bill T. Jones is of the latter variety, and the dance world is fortunate to have him." Jones' style of dance-theater is singular in the way his work is simultaneously politically-driven and movement-based: he ingeniously interweaves his concepts within the very structure and movement of the dance.
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company celebrates its 25th anniversary season as it was founded in 1982 after an 11-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. The Company made its Pillow debut in 1989, appeared in the Ted Shawn Theatre in 2002, and most recently, the Pillow co-presented the company at MASS MoCA in 2004. Performing internationally in over 200 cities and 30 countries since the early 1980s, the 10 member company is widely renowned and has been recognized numerous times with New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies), and a nomination for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Dance and Best New Dance Production." The company is comprised of an unusual diversity of dancers, of varying body types, which adds a unique dynamic to their collective stage presence. As different as their movement qualities and unique strengths are, all Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dancers share exceptional technique, virtuosity, and mastery of a wide range of dance styles, consistently delivering compelling performances.
Jones will participate in one session of the PillowTalk lecture series, moderated by a Jacob's Pillow Scholar-in-Residence. PillowTalks are a series of interviews, film screenings and book signings hosted by artists or speakers in the dance field which run during the Festival Season and are free and open to the public. Jones and company members will also participate in post-show talks on the Thursdays of the run. In addition, there will be two master classes on Sunday, June 29 and Sunday, July 6, which are open to the public for a nominal fee.