Doris Duke Theatre Opening Program

Wednesday, July 9, 2025 | Doris Duke Theatre

Join us in celebrating the opening of the new Doris Duke Theatre, a living lab built to provide a space for cutting-edge artists to combine dance and creative technologies into unforgettable works. 

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Schedule of Events

7pm: Historic Ribbon-Cutting Celebration
A historic ribbon-cutting on the veranda to open the new theater, which is free and open to the public.

8pm: Inaugural Program in the Doris Duke Theatre
The inaugural program in the Doris Duke Theatre will unite the past, present, and future with a thrilling performance by celebrated artists. Following an honor song performed by Shawn L. Stevens and Friends of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans from Bowler, Wisconsin, the program will feature:

• A movement score by Annie-B Parson, performed by 12 renowned artists associated with the original Doris Duke Theatre: Bebe Miller, Susan Marshall, Brian Brooks, Eiko Otake, Irene Rodríguez, David Thomson, Liz Lerman, David Dorfman, Dianne McIntyre, Dormeshia, Doug Elkins, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.
• An excerpt performed by Shamel Pitts | TRIBE of the evening-length Touch of RED, a work developed during the last Pillow Lab residency held in the original Duke before it burned in 2020.
• The U.S. premiere of an excerpt of OTMO Live, a groundbreaking duet by the U.K.’s Alexander Whitley Dance Company, where motion-capture technology connects a dancer in the Doris Duke Theatre with a dancer in the Ted Shawn Theatre—performing together in real time, even while apart.
• An excerpt from the film Superradiance by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter, which interweaves dance, poetry, music, and AI generative imagery.
• A performance by body percussionist and Guggenheim Fellow Ryan Johnson, Artistic Director of SOLE Defined.
• The program will culminate in a dance party featuring iconic musician JD Samson, best known as a member of the bands Le Tigre and MEN, performing two DJ sets. The dance party will be animated by Scuuulpt, an interactive augmented reality piece by Katherine Helen Fisher and Armon Naeini that employs immersive camera work and dynamic projections to engage with performers and audience alike.

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Two Ways to Join the Magic

Livestream and On-Campus Watch Party

We invite you to join the excitement of the inaugural program, performed for an invited audience in the Doris Duke Theatre, from wherever you are—whether its on campus in the Berkshires, or from the comfort of your home!

• The program will be offered in real-time to audiences around the world as a livestream, free and open to anyone, anywhere. Livestream registration will be open soon.
• Join us on-campus for a special watch party in the Ted Shawn Theatre, where ticket holders can enjoy a live screening of the opening program. Buy tickets here.

FUTURE FIGURES: Dance and Emerging Technologies

Saturday, July 12, 2025, 11:15am-3:30pm | Jameson Family Lobby, Doris Duke Theatre

Catalyzed by curiosity around the ways that technology is reshaping our cultural landscape, FUTURE FIGURES: Dance and Emerging Technologies offers a series of artist talks aiming to cultivate a sense of wonder and possibility surrounding the use of new technology to advance the field of dance, and provide more access for all.

From 11:15am to 3:30pm, preeminent choreographers working at the intersection of dance and technology will gather in the Jameson Family Lobby for this special summit which will be facilitated by Sydney Skybetter, Faculty Director at Brown University’s Art Institute. The full schedule of talks and speakers will be announced soon.

FUTURE FIGURES is presented in partnership with Onassis ONX, and made possible in part with special underwriting support provided by the Doris Duke Foundation, YoungArts, and the Onassis Foundation. 

Nature Walk

Tuesday, July 8 | The Warren Davis Welcome Center

Misty Cook and Kathi Arnold, enrolled members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, will walk the Jacob’s Pillow campus and explain how they gather medicines and plants through practices that have been passed down to them. They will discuss gathering, drying, preservation, and usage and the practice of offering tobacco. Participants are invited to gather plants from the campus to contribute to the new garden at the Doris Duke Theatre.

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Learn more about Kathi and Misty’s work with the Doris Duke Theatre’s medicinal garden in our blog post Interweaving Indigenous Principles: Visual Art and Landscape Design in the New Doris Duke Theatre.

Read the Blog Post

Extended Reality Salon

Saturday, July 12, 2025 from 9:30am-4:15pm, 5pm-7:40pm and
Sunday, July 13, 2025 from 11am-2pm | Forest Studio, Doris Duke Theatre

On Saturday and Sunday of the Duke Opening Week Celebration, an Extended Reality Salon will run in the Forest Studio, free and open to the public. This installation is not ticketed, and is available to the public as a walk-up experience. The Salon will feature two experiences:

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Aoi + Esteban: 0AR (zero AR)

Saturday Only

Aoi + Esteban will present the U.S. premiere of 0AR (zero AR), a collection of short dance works in augmented reality (AR) suitable for all ages, presented on iPads provided to each audience member. Commissioned by Sadler’s Wells in London and co-produced by Biennale de la Danse de Lyon in 2018, 0AR is based on the 2005 groundbreaking production zero degrees, a collaboration between Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Akram Khan, and Nitin Sawney, with sculptor Antony Gormley. Supported by FABRIC International.

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Kinetic Light: territory

Saturday and Sunday

Jacob’s Pillow presents the world premiere of territory, an immersive virtual reality experience centered in a futuristic post-apocalyptic disabled world. The piece is created by Double Eye Studios and internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light.

Utopic and dystopic all at once, territory is a disability-centered, accessible VR experience that surrounds the user in movement, light, vibration, and sound. territory is directed by Kiira Benz and Alice Sheppard; featured performers are Jerron Herman, Laurel Lawson, and Alice Sheppard, with scenography by Michael Maag, sound design/spatial mix by Q Department, sound technology by Mach1, and access design by Lawson and Sheppard.

Enacted in a post-apocalyptic landscape created by human insistence on barriers and borders, territory immerses the witness in a disability-centered, fantastical universe that offers encounters with cosmic figures, dark forces, partnership, and new worlds. territory—the first aesthetically accessible VR headset experience of its kind—explores how the technology of barbed wire (dis)connects humans (from)/to their environment and each other. The project is a reimagining of Kinetic Light’s stage production Wired, a potent aerial and contemporary dance experience that tells race, gender, and disability stories of barbed wire in the United States.

territory is an equitably accessible VR experience which features narrative haptics in parallel with music and sound design. Access is central and generative in all Kinetic Light projects and practices. For territory, the team has integrated artistically equitable access practices into VR development and created full-reality immersive technologies, including spatial and multitrack audio description, haptics, and creative captioning.

Header Image: A golden sun: two figures fly through the air, bodies horizontal, hands clasped, wheelchair wheels facing out. They are encircled by interwoven barbed wire. Still from territory, courtesy of Double Eye Studios/Kinetic Light.