Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company: Body Against Body September 29, 2011

The innovative and influential Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (a program of New York Live Arts) opens The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago’s 2011–12 season with the repertory program “Body Against Body” Thursday, September 29–Saturday, October 1 at 8 p.m. and October 1 at 3 p.m. at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

“Body Against Body” returns to Jones’s roots in the avant-garde with a program that revives and reconsiders the challenging, groundbreaking works that launched Jones and the late Arnie Zane, his partner and collaborator of 17 years. Still some of the most significant examples of the postmodern aesthetic, these athletic pieces redefined the duet form and changed the face of American dance. Both conceptually and physically rigorous, the works take on new life through the diverse dancers of Jones’s company, providing a rare look at the origins of a widely acclaimed choreographer.

Program A (September 29 at 8 p.m., October 1 at 3 p.m.) includes Valley Cottage (1980), a duet unseen since its original performances by Jones and Zane in the early ’80s, with music by Helen Thorington; Continuous Replay (1977, 1991), originally choreographed as a solo by Zane in 1977 under the title Hand Dance and adapted as a group piece by Jones in 1991, featuring Dance Center Music Director Richard Woodbury performing a live electronic score; and Monkey Run Road (1979), one of the first Jones/Zane duets that reveals the duo’s early dance-making concerns, with music by Thorington. Program B (September 30 and October 1 at 8 p.m.) includes Duet X 2 (1982), a work rooted in conventional modern dance vocabulary and marked by demanding athletics, surprising shapes and changing relationships; Continuous Replay; and Blauvelt Mountain (1980, 2002), an eccentric duet that capitalizes on the disparities and specificities of contrasting body types, with music by Thorington. Both programs contain full nudity.

Official Website: http://colum.edu/dancecenter