Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: Afterwardsness

We are proud to open our in-person performance season with the latest work by one of America’s leading dance theater companies. The Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company presents a unique performance that places the audience in an immersive environment with the dancers.

In the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, afterwardsness is “a mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of sexual or traumatic meaning to earlier events... “emphasizing the notion of “trauma”, this evocative term comes very close to describing Jones’ state of mind during the twin pandemics: COVID-19 and the calling out of systemic racism in the wake of high profile abuses by the police. There is a retrospective dimension to Afterwardsness as much of its choreography comes out of assignments given to the dancers during their isolation requiring them to learn from archival videos stretching back 40 years.

Afterwardsness was commissioned by Park Avenue Armory, first performed at the Park Avenue Armory on October 16, 2020, and is presented at UMass Amherst in partnership with the UMass Dance Program.

Note for families and groups: This performance uses nontraditional, immersive-style seating in groups of 2-4 people.
Please note: subscription discounts do not apply to this performance.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company was born in 1982 out of an 11-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. The Company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent and is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the dance-theater world.