This Is Uncomfortable The gifts of mortality and movement, from “Notes From America”
Oct 10, 2024
Bill T. Jones, choreographer and dancer who co-founded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, reflects on creating Still/Here during the AIDS crisis. He discusses survivor workshops, turning personal movement and stories into choreography, audience reactions and controversies, and remounting the work for new generations. The conversation centers on mortality, memory, and how movement holds meaning.
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Meeting That Changed Everything
- Bill T. Jones describes meeting Arnie Zane at a pub and how that relationship transformed his life and art.
- Arnie urged Bill to take dance seriously and helped him discover movement as a communicative medium.
Turning Mortality Into Movement
- Still/Here grew from survivor workshops that reframed mortality as material for choreography.
- Jones wanted a work about courage and the resourcefulness needed to perform the act of living.
Workshops As Choreography Source
- Jones ran 12 workshops across ten cities with almost 100 participants facing life-threatening illness.
- He used simple exercises like drawing life maps and asking volunteers to 'walk their life' as choreography seeds.
