Bill T. Jones and company returned to Minneapolis as part of their ongoing home-away-from-home commitment to the Walker and to the Twin Cities. Gathering material for a new dance-theater work called Loud Boy--a contemporary interpretation of Euripides' The Bacchae--the company worked with a broad cross section of the community to explore cultural and personal images of God, a thematic issue at the heart of the Greek tragedy. A series of interactive discussions called "What Does Your God Look Like?" provided Jones with rich source material for the work while giving community participants an active and meaningful opportunity to engage with each other, the company, and the creative process. Additional workshops, master classes, and a lecture/demonstration were presented at venues throughout the Twin Cities.

Bill T. Jones and company returned to Minneapolis as part of their ongoing home-away-from-home commitment to the Walker and to the Twin Cities. Gathering material for a new dance-theater work called Loud Boy--a contemporary interpretation of Euripides' The Bacchae--the company worked with a broad cross section of the community to explore cultural and personal images of God, a thematic issue at the heart of the Greek tragedy. A series of interactive discussions called "What Does Your God Look Like?" provided Jones with rich source material for the work while giving community participants an active and meaningful opportunity to engage with each other, the company, and the creative process. Additional workshops, master classes, and a lecture/demonstration were presented at venues throughout the Twin Cities.

American, b. 1952
A courageous, at times conflicted, choreographer, Bill T. Jones has deftly balanced social/political concerns with abstract work of formal beauty and complexity. Together with partner Arnie Zane, he helped introduce elements now common in contemporary dance: partnering between men; the casting of...

American, b. 1952
A courageous, at times conflicted, choreographer, Bill T. Jones has deftly balanced social/political concerns with abstract work of formal beauty and complexity. Together with partner Arnie Zane, he helped introduce elements now common in contemporary dance: partnering between men; the casting of dancers of all shapes, sizes, and colors; involvement of entire communities (professional performers and amateurs alike) in the creation of key works; use of spoken text and movement simultaneously; an exploration of autobiographical truths in his work (presaging much of the identity politics of the 80s and 90s); and the use of a full amalgam of movement styles and collaborative strategies.

The struggle between the literal and the abstract, the political and the formal, the angry and the cool, have always fed Jones’s work. The son of migrant Southern Baptist farm workers, Jones and Zane began unorthodox explorations of contact improvisation and personal revelation soon after they met in 1971. Rejecting the austere prescriptions of the Judson Dance innovators of the time, they embraced narrative, pop music, fashion, sets, costumes, and full theatricality.

Jones has spent a life confronting the issues that he has often said “unite us outside of the aesthetic”—the cultural and historical struggles that continue to define the country and its people. In recent decades, he and the Walker have grown up together. His often painful struggle balancing what he feels are the responsibilities of an engaged citizen with the pure commitment to his art have only served to make his work richer, more emotionally engaged, and increasingly profound. He is an artist and public figure who gives one hope in sometimes hopeless-feeling times.