IN CONVERSATION: BILL T. JONES AND HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

Dancer and choreographer BILL T. JONES and historian and professor HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. discuss CONTRIBUTING to-and PRESERVING-the BLACK cultural LEGACY

- ARIANA MARSH

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Bill T. Jones first met in 1994, when Gates, then early in his career as a professor at Harvard, who was at the height of his career. Nearly 30 years later, the two have remained friends and continue to set-and then exceed-the pace within artistic and intellectual spaces.

Jones and his partner in life and dance, Arnie Zane, began performing together in the early 1970s. In 1982, they founded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, assembling a nontraditional group of dancers of all ethnicities, sizes, and backgrounds to perform their groundbreaking works, which rejected the more restrictive styles of classic modern dance and incorporated film, singing, and spoken dialogue. Shepherding a new type of postmodern dance, they commented on topics like identity, censorship, homophobia, and narratives surrounding the Black male body through raw, emotive choreography that often saw male dancers performing sensual duets.

In 1988, Zane died of AIDS-related lymphoma, and the experience of watching his partner's suffering inspired Jones to choreograph his most well-known piece to date, the controversial Still/Here (1994), which included videotaped interviews with individuals dying from AIDS and cancer. Throughout his career, Jones has also collaborated with a number of other companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and choreographed the Broadway musicals Spring Awakening (2006) and Fela! (2009), for which he won Tony awards.