The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s home season, at New York Live Arts, consists of two programs, one auto-fictional and the other global. From last year’s blockbuster Ailey exhibition at the Whitney comes the solo Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin… the un-Ailey?, in which Jones reflects on his divergence from Ailey—his political postmodern formalism hardly appeals to the mainstream—only to find them meeting at the racism they both labored under. Jones is a riveting performer. Meanwhile the ensemble program “People, Places, and Things” conceives the dangerous deeps in which stateless people drown as an analogy for this desperate political moment, where the basic human right to “live where one wants to live; love who one wants to love … and discover the world and oneself within it” is under increasing threat. Despite the charged material, Jones doesn’t resort to straightforward storytelling, polemic, or symbolism. Rather, he proceeds with words and dance almost as Merce Cunningham did with music and dance: they coexist, friendly and autonomous, with serendipitous bursts of intimation. —Apollinaire Scherr