Bill T. Jones, multimedia innovator

We'd like to congratulate choreographer Bill T. Jones, honored as one of this year's five Kennedy Center awardees who will be feted in December by President and Mrs. Obama. The Tony award-winning Jones might not have the name recognition of a few of his fellow honorees, Oprah and Sir Paul McCartney, but his body of work is inventive, thrilling and for those of us who embrace multimedia, yes, he's intensely collaborative. Drawing on a wide variety of texts and integrating compelling narratives, visual imagery, layered musical scores and stylistic design, Jones pushes the boundaries of modern dance into a wide new wonderland. 

His current work, an evening-length piece about Abraham Lincoln, Fondly We do Hope... Fervently We Do Pray, comes to the West Coast in March 2011. Described as an investigation into a handful of key moments from Lincoln's life, it envisions the America that might have been, had Lincoln completed the Reconstruction. It's dance. It's theater. It's a creative effort to expose the great distance between what is and what could have been. Jones is guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing and if you can't see him live, check out the trailer for the upcoming documentary,"A Good Man," exploring how he puts this piece together, to be broadcast on PBS's American Masters next year.