Part 4: Our Hall of Fame

Any celebration of the The Advocate's founding in 1967 must honor the heroes for LGBT rights that we've covered for 45 years. With one honoree named per year, the list will be announced in parts and culminate in an event in Los Angeles this month.

BY Advocate Contributors

March 28 2012 11:16 AM ET

HEROES 1990 BILL T. JONES X560 | ADVOCATE.COM

Bill T. Jones’s choreography has been performed all over the world, often by the dance company he founded in 1982 with his late partner Arnie Zane, who died of AIDS in 1988. Jones himself has been HIV-positive since 1985, never hiding the diagnosis. After Zane's death, Jones choreographed a tribute to his partner. And in 1990, Jones was on the cover of The Advocate urging gay men to never stop loving.

Jones's provocative piece Still/Here drew attention in 1994 to the casualties of the AIDS pandemic. In it, dancers wearing blood-red costumes moved against a backdrop of projected images of the people Jones had met while leading "Survival Workshops" across the country.

Jones is writer and director of Fela! and the recipient of many major awards, including two Tonys and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, also known as the "genius" grant. With all that audiences have seen of him, Jones still told The Advocate in 2009, "I am mystery to myself and I am certainly not an open book to you.”
—Lucas Grindley