Last Night On Earth

Fülszöveg

In a book thaf is parf merticJlr.'part méditation, and part performance, "today's most daring choreographer" (Newsweek) Charts his dance's origins and de-velopment in the context of his remarkable life. And he brings to his account all of the honesty. dignity. and moral conviction that are the hallmarks of his work.
Born in Bunnell, Florida, in 1952, the tenth of twelve children in a migrant worker's family, Bill T. Jones spent his earlyyears traveling up and down the East Coast with his parents as they followed the crop seasons. In 1959 they settled in upstate New York, and it was there-singing rounds in dusty tractor yards and watching grown-ups from the shadows of the juke joint-that Jones began his life in dance. He came of age in the sixties with Woodstock and the music of The Doors, Bob Dylan, and Nina Simone, and he attended College during the era of the militant Student activism in the early seventies.
During his freshman year at Binghamton, Jones met Arnie Zane, with... Tovább

Fülszöveg

In a book thaf is parf merticJlr.'part méditation, and part performance, "today's most daring choreographer" (Newsweek) Charts his dance's origins and de-velopment in the context of his remarkable life. And he brings to his account all of the honesty. dignity. and moral conviction that are the hallmarks of his work.
Born in Bunnell, Florida, in 1952, the tenth of twelve children in a migrant worker's family, Bill T. Jones spent his earlyyears traveling up and down the East Coast with his parents as they followed the crop seasons. In 1959 they settled in upstate New York, and it was there-singing rounds in dusty tractor yards and watching grown-ups from the shadows of the juke joint-that Jones began his life in dance. He came of age in the sixties with Woodstock and the music of The Doors, Bob Dylan, and Nina Simone, and he attended College during the era of the militant Student activism in the early seventies.
During his freshman year at Binghamton, Jones met Arnie Zane, with whom he formed a personal and artistic partnership that would last for seventeen years. Their relationship began with the exuberant testing of limits-in love and in dance. It encompassed touring the world as a duet dance team and founding an in-ternationally recognized dance Company. And it ended with Zane's death in 1988.
Jones has continued to Choreograph and dance. and in Last Night on Earth he documents the création of several of his pieces, induding Absence, Last Supper at Uncle Toms Cabin/The Promised Land, Last Night on Earthrand Still/Here. Jones illuminâtes the process through which his work has become a way of
( continued on back flap )
expressing profound emotion; of exploring ideas around memory, sexuality, race, and mortality, of im-posing order and beauty on chaos and despair. And in so doing, he shows dance to be not only a sequence of beautiful movements on a stage, but also an inštrument of survival. By making this magnificent power of art dear, Jones affirms-in celebration and in elegy-the ephemeral but triumphant náture of life itself.
Bill 1 Jones is Artistic Director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Resident Choreographer of the Lyon Opera Ballet in Lyon, France. He lives in New York.
Peggy Gillespie is a freelance journalist. She lives in western Massachusetts. Vissza