Play and Play: An Evening of Music & Movement

Performed with live musicians,* Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music applies Jones’s inventive choreography to some of the most important Western musical works of our time. Featuring compositions by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Ravel or Schubert this program highlights the joy of musicians and dancers working together.

D-Man in the Waters (1989)

“In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.”- Jenny Holzer

Bill T Jones’s joyful tour-de-force, D-Man in the Waters, is a true classic of modern dance and a two time New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award-winning work. It is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit that guides audiences through loss, hope and triumph. Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20 the work is one of the finest examples of the post-modern aesthetic and was featured in PBS’s landmark film Dancing in the Light – Six Dances by African-American Choreographers.

Spent Days Out Yonder (2000)

Spent Days Out Yonder is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, set to the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The movement is firmly rooted in Mr. Jones’s elegant, weighted movement vocabulary, challenging dancers to move with ease, efficiency and physical honesty through the sublime score.

Continuous Replay (1977, revised 1991)

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. A newly commissioned score for string octet by Jerome Begin combines motifs from Beethoven’s first and last string quartets with recorded sounds to create a surprising soundscape. Can be performed with or without nudity.