Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company

CHAPEL/CHAPTER

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4, 5 December, h. 20.30

AUDITORIUM CONCILIAZIONE

The professional label of sumptuous choreographer does not fully describe Bill T. Jones, one of the icons of contemporary U.S. dance. Whilst it certainly applies to him, he is much more than this, being a penetrating observer of our times, whose glance is packed with philosophical acuteness and political strength.
In his work, the power of dance, group coordination, the beauty of the body and the poetry of movement are intertwined with major social, anthropological and moral themes.
With Chapel /Chapter, Jones returns to Rome to present one of his most vigorous and yet disturbing works of recent years, divided into three episodes in which violence and the way it is used by the media takes on an emblematic value. Three stories inspired by actual facts, where ordinary brutality is vented on strangers, on relatives and even on the perpetrators themselves. A blood-free polyptych, where the plots are brought to life by a narrator, distant like an autopsy report or the account of a trial, while the dance hurls itself through the emotions and states of minds of the characters.
Eleven talented performers work closely together to animate the story with energy and clarity, in a distanced dimension in keeping with the typical style of Bill T. Jones and black American dance generally, where the sudden powerful emergence of the single individuals is always reabsorbed into the collective dimension.
The show is performed within a flexible set designed by Bjorn Amelan, which, enhanced by the videos of Janet Wong, is redeveloped for the various places where the performance is held. Part of the public is seated on the stage around the dancers: a community that is brought together by dance when witnessing stories of ordinary folly.

Bill T. Jones  is an American artistic director, choreographer and dancer based in New York City. He is the recipient of the 2007 Tony Award, the 2005 Wexner Prize, the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement and the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, as well as a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship. Jones began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY), studying classical ballet and modern dance. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide as a soloist and duet company with his late partner, Arnie Zane before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982. Since then he created more than 100 works for his own company, and also for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, AXIS Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Diversions Dance Company, among others.