Works by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, 5th Annual Live Ideas Festival & More Set for New York Live Arts' 2016-17 Season

New York Live Arts, home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and under the artistic leadership of MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of the Arts recipient Bill T. Jones, announced its upcoming 2016-2017 season today.

Introducing a new institutional branding designed by Pentagram, a new website created by TNBW/Till Bergs and a modification of the company's name to Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Live Arts will be entering the season with an exciting new look.

The 2016-2017 New York Live Arts season will open with a collaboration by three of today's must-see innovators, Lars Jan, Geoff Sobelle, and Nichole Canuso, entitled Pandæmonium. Creating a new work together for the first time following years of mutual support across the Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles performance scenes, dancer/choreographer Nichole Canuso (Midway Avenue, HERE, 2015), theater artists Geoff Sobelle (The Object Lesson, BAM Next Wave 2015, New York Theater Workshop, 2017) and Lars Jan (TIMe: The Institute of Memory, Under the Radar '16) will premiere Pandæmonium at New York Live Arts September 28-October 1, 7:30 PM. Pandæmonium bridges dance, theater, rock concert and real-time cinema, exploring themes of interconnectedness and isolation in our digitally enhanced world through the creation of a cinematic space where infinite worlds collide.

The New York City premiere of parts one and two of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's new dance theatre work, the Analogy Trilogy will be presented at the Joyce Theater October 25, through November 6, 2016. Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist, a tragic, yet humorous journey through the sex trade, drug use and excess during the 1980s is part two of the trilogy, a work based on oral histories and inspired by W.G. Sebald's award-winning novel The Emigrants. Part one, Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, recounts the story of 95-year old Dora Amelan, a French Jewish nurse, social worker and World War II survivor. A preview of Lance will be given at Dancers' Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY, on June 12, the world premiere of the piece will be presented at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, on July 1st and 2nd, 2016. For more information on the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's touring, see attached schedule.

Complementing the Joyce Theater performances, Bill T. Jones will be in conversation with renowned artists. On October 29, Jones will be speaking with visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, and on November 5 with director Moisés Kaufman and historian Mary Marshall Clark. Both events will take place at New York Live Arts starting at 5PM.

Live Arts will continue its Open Spectrum Community Dialogues providing space for reflection on the most vital issues facing communities today with a fall series titled Obama Out. The series focuses on the final days of the first black presidency and President Obama's legacy following an unprecedented era of achievement that will resonate for decades to come. Fall event dates are October 5, October 24 and December 5, 2016. Open Spectrum events will continue in the spring on February 13, April 10 and May 15, 2017.

Through its Live Feed creative residency program, Live Arts supports and nurtures the creation of new work with developmental residencies and commissions over two years. Informal public showings offer a sneak peek into each resident artist's process before they hit the Live Arts stage. Second-year Live Feed artists Gillian Walsh, Sonya Tayeh, Andrea Kleine, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Adrienne Truscott will present full-length productions of work developed during their Live Feed residency.

Finding formalism in an infinite abyss, Gillian Walsh's new work presented November 16-19, 2016, continues in the vein of uncompromising choreographic investigation that takes dance as its subject but does not create dance. Deceptively simple, but designed to cultivate a different kind of attention in its audience, Walsh's new work intends to circulate outside of traditional theatrical contexts. She continues to work with longtime collaborators Maggie Cloud and Mickey Mahar, among others.

Obie and Lucille Lortel Award winner and Drama Desk- and Emmy Award-nominated choreographer Sonya Tayeh's emotionally charged dance-symphony you'll still call me by name (working title), presented Dec 9-10, 13-17, 2016, explores the mystifying, complex and sometimes jagged relationship between mother and daughter. Live music by indie-folk duo The Bengsons.

Andrea Kleine's new project, My Dinner with Andrea: the piece formerly known as Torture Playlist, will be shown February 9-11, 2017. Kleine began making a dance about the music deployed in the CIA's torture program. Utterly depressed, she abandoned that idea and channeled theater shaman Andre Gregory from his 1981 film My Dinner with Andre, creating a new version of the famed dinner conversation as she seeks answers on how to make a dance about torture, or how to make anything at all. The piece emerges as an amalgam of fragments from the reclusive artist whose work is "wry, poignant" (New York Times) and "something like genius" (ArtVoice).

Yackez (Larissa and Jon Velez-Jackson) debuts Give It To You Stage, presented March 29-April 1, 2017, culminating this art-pop duo's body of underground performances into a large-scale dance musical in two acts. The performance will feature their Queer pro-wrestling dance ensemble and a special appearance by seniors from Larissa's citywide dance-fitness classes, creating a multi-generational interdisciplinary spectacle.

Adrienne Truscott's Wild Bore, shown April 5-8, 2017, features three of the international cabaret circuit's most notorious artists: Adrienne Truscott, Zoe Coombs Marr and Ursula Martinez. Using reviews and critical writing about live performance, Wild Bore looks at what it is to walk the tightrope between elitist and accessible, fidelity and translation, audacity and restraint.

New York Live Arts is very proud to announce the 2016-17 Year One Live Feed artists who will present workshop showings of new work in the 2016-17 season followed by 2017-18 commissioned season premieres. These artists include DANCENOISE, Jack Ferver, Joanna Kotze, Carlos Soto and Walter Dundervill. The Live Feed program continues its support of new work development in partnership with several institutions, including American Dance Institute (ADI), Queens College CUNY Department of Drama, Theater, and Dance, Barnard College and more.

Returning Feb 2-4, 2017 is Ellen Robbins' Dances by Very Young Choreographers. This showcase of young talent has become one of New York Live Arts' most beloved community programs, inspiring children by exposing them to live performances created and performed by their peers. The work is often humorous, dramatic, lyrical, or abstract, and always entertaining.

A special highlight of the 2016-2017 season is New York Live Arts' annual interdisciplinary series, Live Ideas. For the 2017 festival, March 6-19, 2017, trans-genre artist Mx. Justin Vivian Bond will curate a series examining the idea of a world without binaries. The festival arrives at a critical moment in which the very idea of binaries-across gender, politics, theology, sensory perception and race-are under question. A series of performances, keynote lectures and exhibitions will explore the hierarchies and assumptions resulting from a culturally dominant mode of binary thinking.

Making its world premiere as part of Live Ideas is Richard Move's highly anticipated collaboration with acclaimed theater artist Alba Clemente and visual artist Paolo Canevari entitled XXYY, a poetic, multi-sensorial and otherworldly theatrical event exploring the multiplicity of chromosomal combinations that genetically encode and produce gender identity, revealing the spectrum of gender and de/reconstructing the conventional binaries of male and female. Synthesizing visual art, dance and performance, XXYY offers a provocative, alternative vision of the world as it steadily builds toward an ecstatic state. The piece will be presented March 8-11, 2017.

Bessie Award winner and New York Live Arts' 2015-2017 Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist Okwui Okpokwasili presents the New York City premiere of Poor People's TV Room April 19-22, 26-29, 2017, created as part of her two-year residency at Live Arts. The piece is informed by two historic incidents in Nigeria: The Women's War of 1929, a resistance movement against British colonial powers, and the Boko Haram kidnappings of more than 300 girls that launched the Bring Back Our Girls movement. Created in collaboration with director/visual designer Peter Born, the piece will be performed by a multi-generational ensemble, featuring movement, song and text influenced by dystopian folklore, speculative fiction, Igbo cosmology and the futures and commodities markets.

Live Arts' legendary Fresh Tracks Performance & Residency program continues its 52-year commitment to bringing new voices to the fore.. Aimed at providing career and residency support for five emerging artists, the program begins with a series of career-oriented professional development workshops leading up to a debut showcase of previously created works on October 6-7, 2016, and culminates in a workshop presentation of new works developed throughout the residency on March 24-25, 2017. Through Fresh Tracks, New York Live Arts provides a singular opportunity to new artistic voices to gain professional development, experience and recognition.

The 2016-2017 touring season for New York Live Arts' resident company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company starts with a world premiere of Jones' latest work Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, and continues with a national tour of Analogy/Dora: Tramontane; a highly anticipated return of the company to the Singapore International Festival of Arts, which includes a one-night only talking solo choreographed and performed by Bill T. Jones and three performances of a site-specific work, A Letter/Singapore with twenty-three local dancers; a two-week season at New York's The Joyce alternating performances of Analogy/Dora and Analogy/Lance, both New York City premieres; and a US premiere of A Letter to My Nephew at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA. (For a detailed touring schedule, see season calendar below).

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
Located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and active engagement with the social, political and cultural currents of our time.

At the center of its identity is Artistic Director Bill T. Jones, world-renowned choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer. New York Live Arts serves as home base for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and is the company's sole producer, providing support and the environment to originate innovative and challenging new work for the Company and the NYC creative community. New York Live Arts produces and presents dance, music and theater performances in its 20,000 square-foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square-foot studios that can be combined into one large studio. New York Live Arts offers an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of artists and commissions.
The creation of new work by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is made possible by the company's Partners in Creation: Anne Delaney, Zoe Eskin, Eleanor Friedman, and Carol Tolan.

Support is provided by Con Edison, Creative Capital, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the Ford Foundation, Goethe-Institut, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust, the Jerome Foundation, the Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the National Performance Network, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Shubert Foundation, and Theatre Development Fund.

New York Live Arts is supported by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council with special thanks to Council Member Corey Johnson, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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NEW YORK LIVE ARTS PRESS CONTACTS:
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NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
NEW YORK CITY SEASON 2016-2017

September 28 - October 1, 2016, 7:30PM
Geoff Sobelle / Nichole Canuso / Lars Jan: PANDÆMONIUM
Produced by Nichole Canuso Dance Company & Early Morning Opera
Explores themes of interconnectedness and isolation in our digitally enhanced world through the creation of a cinematic space where infinite worlds collide.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(NYC Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

October 5, 2016, 7PM
Open Spectrum: SUPERUNKNOWN!
An esteemed group of former, outgoing, or recently relocated leaders of New York City arts institutions, who have made their own unique mark on our city's cultural identity-Karen Brooks Hopkins, Senior Fellow in Residence, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and President Emerita, BAM; Ruby Lerner, Founding President and Executive Director, Creative Capital; Danny Simmons, Co-Founder and Vice Chair, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation-examine the past, present, and future of our field.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

October 24, 2016, 8PM
Open Spectrum: MIC DROP!
MC / Poet Baba Israel hosts a super jam of NYC performers, poets and provocateurs putting the Obama Era to the ultimate soul-infused test, NYC style. Featuring a few of NYC's most dynamic political and musical voices in an evening of poetry and song, the evening includes the return of Universes and special guests.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

October 25-30 & November 1-6, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with his nephew, Lance T. Briggs. A tragic, yet humorous journey through the sex trade, drug use and excess during the 1980s.
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane. Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
(NYC Premiere)

October 29, 2016, 5PM
Bill T. Jones in conversation with Carrie Mae Weems, presented in conjunction with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's performance at the Joyce Theater.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

Nov 5, 2016, 5PM
Bill T. Jones in conversation with Moisés Kaufman and Mary Marshall Clark, presented in conjunction with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's performance at the Joyce Theater.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

November 16-19, 2016, 7:30PM
Live Feed: Gillian Walsh
Title TBD
An uncompromising investigation of dance.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(World Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

December 5, 2016, 7PM
Open Spectrum: TBD
Details TBD
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

December 9-10, 13-17, 2016, 7:30PM
Live Feed: Sonya Tayeh
you'll still call me by name
An emotionally charged dance-symphony exploring the complex relationship between mother and daughter.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(World Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

January 5-9, 2017
Live Artery
Various artists and locations.

Feb 2-4, 2017
Ellen Robbins
Dances by Very Young Choreographers
A showcase of young talent.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

February 9-11, 2017, 7:30PM
Live Feed: Andrea Kleine
My Dinner with Andrea: the piece formerly known as Torture Playlist
A dance about music used by the CIA for torture while channeling theater shaman Andre Gregory.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(World Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

February 13, 2017
Open Spectrum
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

March 6-19, 2017
Live Ideas: Mx'd Messages
Curated by Mx. Justin Vivian Bond
A series that examines the idea of a world without binaries.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

March 8-11, 2017, 7:30PM
Live Ideas: Richard Move / Alba Clemente / Paolo Canevari
XXYY
A poetic multi-sensorial theatrical event that explores the multiplicity of chromosomal combinations.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(World Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

March 29-April 1, 2017, 7:30PM
Live Feed: Larissa Velez-Jackson
Yackez
A large-scale dance musical with music by Larissa and Jon Velez-Jackson.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(World Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

April 5-8, 2017, 7:30PM
Adrienne Truscott
Wild Bore
Using critical writing about live performance, Wild Bore looks at what it is to walk the tightrope between audacity and restraint.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(NYC Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

April 10, 2017
Open Spectrum
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

April 19-22, 26-29, 2017, 7:30PM
Okwui Okpokwasili
Poor People's TV Room
Informed by Nigeria's The Women's War of 1929 and the Boko Haram kidnappings of more than 300 girls.
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
(NYC Premiere / New York Live Arts Commission)

May 15, 2017
Open Spectrum
New York Live Arts
New York, NY

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY TOURING SCHEDULE

July 1 - 2, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with his nephew, Lance T. Briggs. A tragic, yet humorous journey through the sex trade, drug use and excess during the 1980s.
American Dance Festival
Durham Performing Arts Center
Durham, NC
(World Premiere)

September 14, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Making and Doing a Talking Solo with Bill T. Jones
Singapore International Festival of Arts
Singapore

September 15-17, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
A Letter/Singapore
Singapore International Festival of Arts
LASALLE College of the Arts
Singapore

September 24, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Play and Play: An Evening of Music & Movement
Bill T. Jones applies inventive choreography to some of the most important works of Western classical music.
SUNY Binghamton
Anderson Center
Binghamton, NY

Sept 30 & October 1, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
Dance St. Louis
Touhill Performing Arts Center
St Louis, MO
October 9, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
University of Akron
EJ Thomas Hall
Akron, OH

October 14, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
George Mason University
Center for the Arts
Fairfax, VA

October 18, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
Lafayette College
Williams Center for the Arts
Easton, PA

October 21 & 22, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
August Wilson Center
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
Pittsburgh, PA

November 10-13, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
A Letter to My Nephew
Bill T. Jones's new site-specific work.
Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, MA
(US Premiere)

November 28-December 13, 2016
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant
Creative Residency
Wickenburg, AZ

January 17, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Gardner Lecture with Bill T. Jones & Taylor Mac
University of Utah
Kingsbury Hall
Salt Lake City, UT

January 20, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Story/Time
Bill T. Jones returns to the stage in a critically acclaimed work of storytelling and dance.
The Granada
Santa Barbara, CA

January 22, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Lecture with Bill T. Jones
Jewish Community Center SF
San Francisco, CA

February 3, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane
Based on an oral history Jones conducted with 95-year-old Dora Amelan. A meditation on perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
University of North Carolina Greensboro
Aycock Auditorium
Greensboro, NC

May 13, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
A Letter to My Nephew
Bill T. Jones's new site-specific work
The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, SUNY
Purchase, NY

May 25, 2017
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Play and Play: An Evening of Movement & Music
Bill T. Jones applies inventive choreography to some of the most important works of Western classical music.
University of California San Diego
San Diego, CA

Photo: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Analogy/Lance: Pretty AKA The Escape Artist by Paul B. Goode

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