If you take his philosophy at its most fundamental, Bill T. Jones generates music through bodies and bodies through music. As a longtime athlete and dancer, and as co-founder and choreographer for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York, Jones relishes the moment when live music moves from the hands of a string player, through the body of a dancer and into the audience as an aesthetic collaboration – if not corroboration – between sound and movement.

Jones has recently completed three new company works, two of which he will bring to the Maine Center for the Arts next week. The 10-person, multicultural dance company will perform onstage with the Orion String Quartet. The music group is in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where Jones’ modern dance choreography was performed last week. The program is now touring through March, and the local venue is one of only nine stops planned in the country.

“As dancers, we feel starved for live music,” said Jones, who was last in Maine in 1991 with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land,” a multimedia theatrical event he created based on a hallucinatory vision of his personal and professional partner Arnie Zane. (Zane, with whom Jones had a 17-year relationship, died of complications from AIDS in 1988.)

“The live music makes us more alert,” continued Jones, speaking the day after the New York premiere of a program billed as “The Art of Collaboration.”

“The dancers have to become more musical. When you work with taped music, the material, the duration of the piece, the phrasing, the breaths are performed always the same. But when you work with musicians, you cannot go on automatic. You have to know the music better and listen more carefully and be prepared for the unexpected. I think it makes the performance more alive.”

For the musicians, who are at times separated from one another onstage, the experience of working closely with dancers has broadened their sense of the imagery and rhythm of the music. When the members of the Orion String Quartet were considering the project several years ago, they watched a rehearsal of a piece Jones had choreographed with accompaniment by another quartet.

“We were stunned,” said Todd Phillips, violinist and co-founder of Orion, which is also based in New York. “Our jaws dropped to the floor. It was so powerful and moving and individual. There was a special feeling right there about the possibility of a wonderful collaboration, and these new pieces have been an extraordinary project.”

The program at the Maine Center will include “Verbum,” in which the dancers move through metal structures while musicians play Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135; “Worldwithout/In,” a theatrical piece to a string quartet by contemporary Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag; and “D-Man in the Waters,” Jones’ 1989 work for which he won a New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award.

“So much of what Bill has found in his expression and reaction to the music has been very revealing to us,” said Phillips. “It has helped our interpretation of the pieces and has brought out aspects we weren’t sure of. Very often musicians try to find images to help with interpreting music. So it’s extraordinary to see something you felt yourself and to see a different reaction on the part of a dancer. We found in Bill’s ideals and integrity and devotion a similar language even though it’s a different form.”

An examination of boundaries has always been integral to Jones’ style. Early in his career, he traveled with grass-roots projects to remote places in the country to dance and share artistic ideas in public forums. When the company performed in Orono in the ’90s, the program required community participants.

Even with the Orion group, Jones has contributed a small wave of his signature magic. He gave the four players notes about their physical presence onstage, notes that Phillips said will carry into future performances in other venues.

“He awakened an awareness in us – to be more dancerly,” said Phillips.

These are not gimmicks or bags of tricks, but Jones’ own inquiries into the relationship between artist and self, artist and other, artist and idea.

In the last decade, Jones has received a MacArthur Fellowship, published the memoir “Last Night on Earth” and the children’s book “Dance,” has received several honorary doctorates and, in 2000, was named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition.

Next week, Jones turns 50. Although he tours with a solo show, he no longer dances with the company. Is that difficult for a man who started ballet and modern dance training while he was a track star in college and then went on to join the ranks of great American choreographers?

“Yes,” he said unhesitatingly. “But not terribly hard. My ego is under control. I’m now an idiosyncratic dancer. I am more interested in the science of personal style.”

The past, however, stays nudgingly with Jones, whose company turns 20 this year.

“I continue to try to understand where I have been,” he said. “I think I have been through an intense exploration of who and what I am. My life is divided into before Arnie and after Arnie. We were together from the time I was 19 until I was on the cusp of being 40. Those were important years and when Arnie was gone, I had to redefine myself. I had to ask if I was truly an artist. I knew I was a performer, but was I an artist?”

Jones paused, as if considering each of the 11 years since he last was in Orono, a town similar in size to his own hometown in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

“There comes a time when one no longer has the drive of youth,” he responded thoughtfully. “So you have to ask the question: What do you love? That’s where my art comes in. I’ve had to ask: Is it about politics or personal identity or passion? I think now I want to participate in the world of ideas.”

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will perform 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 581-1755.

Dance in schools focus of conference

“Implementing Dance in Maine Schools,” a conference for dancers, administrators, educators and community members, will take place 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, in conjunction with the performance by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The conference includes presentations by Bill T. Jones, Jane Bonbright, executive director of the National Dance Education Organization in Washington, DC, Nancy Salmon of the Maine Arts Commission, and MaryEllen Schaper, an elementary and middle-school physical and dance educator. The conference, which costs $15 preregistered or $25 at the door and includes breakfast and lunch, will be held at the University of Maine Wells Conference Center. For information or registration, call Karen Hartnagle at 947-0366.