Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company makes a much-anticipated return to Aaron Davis Hall with a special season-closing program featuring a preview of new work, Blind Date, and Reading, Mercy and The Artificial Nigger.

With Reading, Mercy and The Artificial Nigger, which had its world premiere at the 2003 American Dance Festival, Bill T. Jones reignites the powerful work for its first Harlem presentation. Combining the text of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, The Artificial Nigger, read by Carl Hancock Rux and Stephanie Berry, with Daniel Bernard Roumain’s radiant score, the piece is not so much about race as it is about how racial and religious reasoning define and distort the essential human interactions of those who practice them.