WPKN February 2023 e-Newsletter
Big Thanks!
Lead Sponsor: Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder
Media Partners: The Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County, MoCA Westport, Connect Fairfield
|
|
Note from Steve di Costanzo, GM of Community Radio Station WPKN 89.5-FM
WPKN 89.5-FM Black History Celebration 2023
WPKN is so thrilled with our closing BHM event at the Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University. WPKN is bringing one of the great modern dance companies, Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company to the area for the first time in a decade. This is a Benefit for WPKN on Saturday, February 25th. (see details below). This New York City-based company is one of the top three modern dance companies in the world - in the company of Alvin Ailey and Mark Morris Dance Company.
WPKN wants to thank our presenting sponsor of the evening- the law firm of Koskoff Koskoff and Bieder. Without their help we could not have presented Bill T. Jones /Arnie Zane Company.
Thanks also go to our other supporters: WPKN's good friends at The Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County including David Green, who also hosts a monthly show on WPKN; as well as Leslie LaSala from MoCA Westport; and thank you Debbie O'Keefe founder of Connect Fairfield.
Food and Drink Sponsors: Doug MacLeod from Mionetto, Douglas Grabe from Little Pub, Eric Bryson from Thelma's Soul Food Restaurant & Bar and Bridgewater Chocolates.
All ticket purchases will also support Bridgeport students from the FAME after-school program to have access to this performance.
Like WPKN - with a new documentary film making the circuit of film festivals- Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company have a documentary film out as well. The film focuses on a particular dance work that embodies much about their life and work. It's called Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters. (see more below)
More than 50 programs spread throughout the month.
________________________________________________
|
|
Information and Tickets for
BILL T. JONES |ARNIE ZANE COMPANY
Saturday,
QUICK CENTER for the Arts: Box Office 203-254-4010
|
|
WPKN BENEFIT EVENT
BLACK HISTORY MONTH CLOSING EVENT
WITH THE MODERN DANCE COMPANY
BILL T. JONES | ARNIE ZANE COMPANY
THE QUICK CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY
Saturday, February 25th 2023
6:00pm VIP RECEPTION
7:30pm Performance
|
|
___________________________________________________________________________________
|
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________
DANCE WORKS TO BE PERFORMED AT THE WPKN BENEFIT
The company is reviving two works from their repertory for this special occasion: Continuous Replay reflects Arnie Zane's interests in photography and film. Originally choreographed by Zane in 1977 as a solo titled Hand Dance and later revised as a group work by Bill T. Jones in 1991, Continuous Replay is based on 45 precise gestures accumulated in space and time, cunningly complicated by discrete movement events. Music made, mixed and re-mixed by John Oswald.
The second piece Story/ is the result of the company's continued investigation in using John Cage's Indeterminacy as a choreographic tool. follows the model for the acclaimed Story/Time, the work employs a random menu of movement that is accompanied by Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden) to craft a conversation between the music and the movement.
Dance performance tickets are $50. A pre-event VIP Reception & Performance ticket is $100. Other options include $150 for Two VIP Reception & Performance tickets. $500 for Six VIP Reception & Performance Tickets. VIP Reception in the lobby at 6pm. Performance 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available in person at the Quick Center Box Office, by phone at 203-254-4010 or at quickcenter.com
ABOUT BILL T. JONES | ARNIE ZANE COMPANY
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.
The Company has been acknowledged for its intensely collaborative method of creation that has included artists as diverse as Keith Haring, Cassandra Wilson, The Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Fred Hersch, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Julius Hemphill and Daniel Bernard Roumain, among others.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company resides at New York Live Arts Live Arts, an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry where Bill T. Jones is Artistic Director.
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,Bolgna, Italy); Blind Date (2006, Peak Performances at Montclair State University); Chapel/Chapter (2006, Harlem Stage Gatehouse); and Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray (2009, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL). The ongoing, site-specific, Another Evening was last performed in its seventh incarnation as Another Evening: Venice/Arsenale (2010, La Biennale di Venezia).
VENUE INFORMATION
The Quick Center for the Arts is located at The Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT. Parking on campus is free of charge. Directions are available at https://quickcenter.fairfield.edu/about-us/directions/index.html
__________________________________________________________________________________________
PURCHASE TICKETS TO BILL T. JONES | ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY - CLICK HERE
|
|
THIS EVENT WILL SELL OUT- PLEASE GET YOUR TICKETS EARLY!
All ticket purchases will also support Bridgeport students from the FAME after-school program to have access to this performance.
|
|
Bill T. Jones Documentary (2021)
CAN YOU BRING IT:
Bill T. Jones and D-Man In The Waters
|
|
|
|
CAN YOU BRING IT: Bill T. Jones and D-Man In The Waters
|
|
Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters is a feature documentary that traces the history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS - Bill T. Jones’ tour de force ballet D-Man in the Waters. In 1989, D-Man in the Waters gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company felt as they were embattled by the AIDS pandemic. As a group of young dancers reconstructs the dance in the present day, they learn about this oft forgotten history and deepen their understanding of the power of art in a time of plague.
Bill T. Jones is arguably the most socially, politically and emotionally compelling choreographer alive today. Thirty years ago, he embedded motifs of risk and sacrifice, love, loss and resurrection in the choreography for D-Man in the Waters. Through an extraordinary series of interviews, archival material, and uniquely powerful cinematography of movement, this 90-minute, lyrical documentary uses the story of this dance to illustrate the triumph of the human spirit in art and within the community.
The film begins in a dance studio in present day where Rosalynde LeBlanc begins to teach D-Man in the Waters to university student dancers. Ms. LeBlanc was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Jones has since entrusted her with his legacy in the teaching of his pieces at colleges around the country.
As the dancers learn the material, we get to know them as individuals. We see their struggles in learning the choreography and understanding the historical context that gave birth to the dance. What can they find in their own lives that will connect them, in spirit, to the time of the plague of AIDS?
In the early eighties, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company was at the forefront of the creative energy spurred by gay liberation. Yet, just at the height of this ecstatic season, AIDS began its inexorable decimation. In 1988, Arnie Zane, Bill’s lover and co-director, died of AIDS-related lymphoma and the future of the company was thrown into question. Facing down immobilizing grief, Bill T. Jones resolved to keep the company alive. Now, choreographing alone, he turned his attention to the creation of a new dance using movement images of water and wave action.
In the company at that time was Demian Acquavella, known as “D-Man,” a nickname that spoke both to his superhero physique and to the affection that he elicited from all who knew him. But that physique began to waste away when Demian was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS only months after Arnie’s death. As the dance was choreographed, Demianʼs health deteriorated. What started as a lighthearted ballet about the movement of water became a penetrating comment on surviving the deluge of a plague. Galvanized by Demian’s struggle, and the struggle of countless others around him who were contracting AIDS, Jones expanded the dance into four fervent movements and named it D-Man in the Waters. The dance would go on to become Bill T. Jones’ biggest hit, but not without bringing a battle-scarred company, the art world intelligentsia, and Demian himself, to that transformative and controversial boundary between life and art.
In present day, the ensemble struggles to inhabit a dance that is the most physically demanding that they have ever done, and also rooted in the spirit and complexity of a time they did not live through. This group of students, for whom AIDS is not a body memory, eventually rehearses with Bill T. Jones, whose body moves with the weight of a lost generation. He challenges them to discover what galvanizes their community in 2016 with the urgency that the AIDS crisis did in 1989; he implores them to “Bring it!” By opening night, will these young people go from imitating the steps of the past to embodying their own generation’s call to action?
____________________________________________________________________________________________
|
|
___________________________________________________________________________________ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
