Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company

One of the most innovative and powerful forces in modern dance

Tuesday • March 31, 2026 • 7:30 pm Main Auditorium

Over the past 40 years, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire worldwide in over 200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent. In 2011, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company merged with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts, of which Bill T. Jones is the artistic director and Janet Wong is the associate artistic director. The repertory of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is widely varied in its subject matter, visual imagery and stylistic approach to movement, voice and stagecraft, and includes musically driven works as well as works using a variety of texts. Some of its most celebrated creations are evening-length works, including Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990, Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music); Still/Here (1994, Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France); We Set Out Early… Visibility Was Poor (1996, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, IA); You Walk? (2000, European Capital of Culture 2000, Bologna, Italy); Blind Date (2006, Peak Performances at Montclair State University); Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL); Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy); Story/Time (2012, Peak Performances); A Rite (2013, Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill); and Deep Blue Sea (2021, Park Avenue Armory). Program: Still/Here 30 years after its premiere, the groundbreaking dance theater work Still/Here by Bill T. Jones returns! The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company remounts this timeless “landmark of 20th-century dance,” underscoring its ongoing resonance with today and its ability to evoke a spirit of survival. Created during one of the most contentious and terrifying periods, the AIDS epidemic, Still/Here broke boundaries between the personal and the political and exemplified a form of dance theatre that is uniquely American. In spite of it being at the center of the culture wars, or because of it, the highly formal multimedia work defined and ultimately transcended its era. In the intervening years, much has changed in the world. Though with another pandemic behind us, wars raging, the planet failing and technology rising, somehow the questions around mortality remain. The highly formal structures of Still/Here are delivered with simplicity and sophistication, marked by spoken text, video portraits, dance and the abstract nature of gesture. Gretchen Bender’s visual concept and multimedia environment is joined by music from Kenneth Frazelle (sung by Odetta) and Vernon Reid. Long-time collaborators include Liz Prince (costumes) and Robert Wierzel (lighting). At the heart of Still/Here are the “Survival Workshops: Talking and Moving about Life and Death.” These workshops were conducted across the country with people living with life-threatening illness. The participants living on the front lines of the struggle to understand our mortality are in possession of information—info possible of being a gift and a burden. The participants’ generosity of spirit and willingness to express their experience both with words and gestures was both inspiring and difficult. They are the essence of Still/Here; their gestures inform the choreography, their words the lyrics, their images the stage. They will always be still here. This work is dedicated to them.