A photographer turned dancer and choreographer, Arnie Zane was co-founder and co-artistic director of Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane and Company. At first in duets with Bill T Jones and subsequently as a choreographer in his own right, Zane developed a theatrical brand of post-modern dance replete with text and attractive stage designs created by such famous collaborators as costumer Willi Smith and visual artist Keith Haring.
Zane was born on September 26, 1948, in the Bronx and received his BA from State University of New York at Binghamton. On St Patrick’s Day, 1971, Binghamton African American freshman Bill T Jones met the 22-year-old photography major Zane. After forming a relationship with Zane, to whom he was immediately attracted, Jones began to envision their partnership in dance. Working first in solos and duets based on contact improvisation, the pair made an unlikely but striking couple.
Jones and Zane formed the American Dance Asylum with Lois Welk in 1973 in Binghamton. Zane briefly created his own dance company in the early 1980s and then co-founded the Jones/Zane company in 1982. Zane and Jones received a New York Dance and Performance Award, a ‘Bessie’, in 1986.
Zane’s primary focus moved from photography to dance though he continued to introduce photography and slide projections into his danceworks.
Their creative interchange defined each other’s artistic vision and led to one of the most celebrated collaborations and explorations of movement, gender, race, and politics in late twentieth-century dance. They shared their personal and creative lives together for the next seventeen years, forging a relationship and a dance company that made them the most visible gay couple in American dance in the 1980s. Arnie Zane died in 1988.
