Bill T. Jones was born in Bunnell, Florida, in 1952, and later moved to upstate New York. He began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton, studying classical ballet and modern dance. In 1982, Jones formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with his long time partner, Arnie Zane. Throughout his prolific career, Jones has explored the integration of the visual arts and dance choreography.

He collaborated with new media artists Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser to produce Ghostcatching, which opened at the Cooper Union, New York, in 1999. In this virtual dance installation, Jones's movements were digitally captured and manipulated, poetically fusing dance and technology. The OpenEnded Group—Marc Downie, Eshkar, and Kaiser—created a new 3-D-version of Ghostcatching for The Dissolve Biennial. In 1994, Jones was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.