The School at Jacob’s Pillow: Contemporary Performance Ensemble

Saturday, July 19 at 5:30pm | Henry J. Leir Stage
World Premiere

Performances by The School at Jacob’s Pillow Performance Ensembles showcase the work of the next generation of dance artists. This performance is the culmination of a three-week Contemporary Program, featuring original repertoire by leading choreographers who serve as Artist Faculty: Program Director Milton Myers and Associate Program Director Francisco Martinez. The performance will feature work by guest choreographers Peter Chu, Andrea Miller, and Aszure Barton.

Dancers of The School at Jacob’s Pillow are apprentices, trainees, pre-professionals, and early-career professionals from around the world. The School’s professional advancement programs are held onsite during the Festival to nurture the artistic voices and growth of the dancers.

This performance took place on August 20, 2022. Scroll for more information.

Performances by The School at Jacob’s Pillow Performance Ensemble provided an inside look at The School experience and featured repertoire created on the dancers by leading choreographers who serve as program faculty. Happening at the culmination of each program, audiences witnessed performances from the Performance Ensembles in the genres of Contemporary Ballet (June 25), Contemporary (July 16), Musical Theatre (August 6), and Dance Theatre: Afro-Latin Immersion (August 20). Program Directors of the Contemporary Ballet Program were Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Luis R. Torres; Program Director of the Contemporary Program was Milton Myers; Program Director of the Musical Theatre Program was Jeffrey Page; and Program Directors of the Dance Theatre: Afro-Latin Immersion program was Maria Torres.

Dancers of The School at Jacob’s Pillow were apprentices, trainees, pre-professionals, and early-career professionals from around the world. Professional Advancement Programs during Festival 2022 were on-site and are designed to nurture the artistic growth of the next generation of dance artists.

Read the Program 

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive
This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive.

The School at Jacob’s Pillow
Musical Theatre Performance Ensemble

This performance took place on August 17, 2024.

Performances by The School at Jacob’s Pillow Performance Ensembles provide an inside look at The School experience and feature repertoire created on the dancers by leading choreographers who serve as program faculty. This performance was the culmination of the 2024 Musical Theatre Program, led by Choreographer/Directors Sekou McMiller, Luis Salgado, and Karla Puno Garcia.

Dancers of The School at Jacob’s Pillow are apprentices, trainees, pre-professionals, and early-career professionals from around the world. The School’s professional advancement programs are held onsite during the Festival to nurture the artistic voices and growth of the next generation of dance artists.

This performance took place on July 29–30, 2022. Scroll for more information.

Michelle N. Gibson is a cultural ambassador of the diasporic dance traditions of the Black community in New Orleans. A Second Line Grand Marshall, Gibson’s choreographic work embraces the spaces between the secular and sacred, touching on Contemporary Modern, Afro Funk, Jazz, Afro-Modern and her own New Orleans Original BuckShop Second Line Aesthetic. Gibson will be performing Takin’ it to the Roots in a roving performance across the Jacob’s Pillow campus, a dance theater work that investigates the creative impulse in Gibson’s choreography and practice, which is rooted in her New Orleans African American experience. A preacher’s daughter, she grew up with knowledge of Congo Square and its significance to New Orleans dance history, and clear understanding that the influences of Senegambian and Angolan dance on the enslaved Africans in New Orleans had as much to do with her attraction to the communal experience of Second Line culture as the sound of the brass band blaring or the buck jumping community members improvising their lived testimonies.

NOJO 7, led by Grammy-Award-Winning drummer and Artistic Director Adonis Rose, is a dynamic ensemble drawn from the full New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. Playing within the New Orleans Brass Band style, the group has the versatility to perform within various musical idioms and has a broad repertoire that encompasses traditional New Orleans music, funk, R&B, and original compositions. The band tours with Ledisi, and has collaborated with the rapper Slick Rick, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eric Benét, and several other major performing artists.

Explore Michelle N. Gibson with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra / NOJO 7

Read the program and PillowNotes

In the Press

“From a solemn opening, the music picks up tempo and Gibson explodes into frenetic movement —strutting, high-stepping, swooping, swirling, stooping — buckjumping dance that celebrates the departed, letting ancestors know a beloved soul is on its way.” Read more in The Berkshire Eagle.

“For the Jacob’s Pillow performances, Gibson is converting “Takin’ It to the Roots,” originally designed for theaters, into processional form: Audience members will follow her to sites around the campus that represent Congo Square and the Black church. The second line at the performance’s end is standard, though. “I always take people out of the theater into the streets,” she said.” Read more in The New York Times.

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive 

This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive.

This performance took place August 10–13, 2022. Scroll for more information.

Witches, trials, and exhibitions fly around in Liz Lerman’s new acclaimed evening-length dance-theater piece, Wicked Bodies. Liz and the unusual cast of performers have been exploring how our bodies become sources of evil and power – from fairy tales to government policies. Why is some knowledge celebrated, some criminalized, and some erased altogether? And who gets to document, describe, and save the remnants? In the presence of magic both old and new, and a surprising collection of witches, audiences will make their way through a restless story and a smashing of worlds. The multidisciplinary piece is designed specifically for a unique setting at Jacob’s Pillow.

Aided by an award-winning design team and developed in part at the Pillow Lab, Lerman creates a world of old crones, shape-shifters, familiars, and imps leading us into a post-extinction tale. Lerman is a MacArthur Fellow and a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient whose work is rooted in intense research, described as having “expansive range, emotional depth and singular beauty” (The Washington Post).

ACCESSIBILITY: This performance took place at a single site with chairs under a tent. This performance is wheelchair accessible. The performance site is a short distance from the Jacob’s Pillow Box Office. Golf carts are available to assist audience members to and from the site.

Explore Liz Lerman

Watch the Post-Show Talk

This Post-Show Talk features choreographer Liz Lerman and performers Ruby Morales and Will Bond, moderated by Scholar-in-Residence Jennifer Edwards. This talk took place in the Festival Tent on August 11, 2022.

Read the Program and PillowNotes

In the Press

“The stories related in “Wicked Bodies” are personal in nature. They are about identity, the experience of being an outsider, persecution, healing, love, family—the way we acquire beliefs about ourselves and the natural world.” Read more in Fjord.

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive

This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive.

WATCH LIZ LERMAN ON JACOB’S PILLOW DANCE INTERACTIVE:

• Nine Short Dances about the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters from 1986
• Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in Hallelujah: In Praise of Fertile Fields from 2000

LISTEN TO LIZ LERMAN ON PILLOWVOICES PODCAST:

• The Body as a Radical Canvas: Liz Lerman

This performance took place on August 10–14, 2022. Scroll for more information.

This performance will be available for on demand access from April 3 to May 14. Click here to learn more.

Celebrated for its vibrant athleticism, humor, theatricality, and commitment to collaboration, Dance Heginbotham, led by Artistic Director John Heginbotham, celebrated its 10th Anniversary having established itself as one of the most adventurous companies on the contemporary dance scene. Praised by The New York Times as having “a true theater artist’s instinct for commanding his audience,” Heginbotham is known for striking choreography that is perceptive, bright, and witty. A past recipient of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, he is most recently acclaimed for his choreography in the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!

The company performed an evening of work in collaboration with Ethan Iverson, the critically acclaimed jazz composer, pianist, and Blue Note Records recording artist. The program featured three works: a revival and two world premieres. Easy Win (2015) draws inspiration from the collaborators’ shared experiences within a formal ballet class. A delightful ode to the repetition, drama, and humor of a dance class, Easy Win dissects its rituals with equal amounts of humor and sincerity through dancers that are “keenly alive to the main pulses of Mr. Iverson’s music” (The New York Times). The world premiere of The Understudies performed by John Heginbotham and Amber Star Merkens. Finally, Dance Sonata, the program’s second world premiere, picked up where Easy Win left off. If Easy Win highlighted the rigors and training in the context of a ballet class, Dance Sonata was the finale for which the performers have been preparing.

Explore Dance Heginbotham

Watch the Post-Show Talk

This Post-Show Talk features John Heginbotham, Artistic Director of Dance Heginbotham, and composer/pianist Ethan Iverson, moderated by Scholar-in-Residence Maura Keefe. The talk took place on the Henry J. Leir Stage on August 11, 2022.

Read the Program and PillowNotes

In The Press

“With Iverson playing eight delightful, vividly-titled pieces on solo piano, seven dancers move on and off stage, in and out of groups, form lines, or circles. Though this is definitely an often purposely kooky depiction of a ballet class, the atmosphere captures the ways in which dancers are deeply interested in and even obsessed by the minutiae (usually).” Read more on The Boston Globe.

“A dramatic shift in rhythm began with martial left-hand fifths that provoked the dancers to overt marches and geometrical extensions that resembled cardboard cut-outs in silhouette against the forest background in declining light.” Read more The Berkshire Eagle. 

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive
This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive.

Watch Dance Heginbotham on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive:

• The Principles of Uncertainty from 2017
• Twin from 2012

STREB

Digital Screening | December 1, 2021 – January 6, 2022

Bring Jacob’s Pillow home for the holidays with a special edition of STREB Extreme Action Company’s 2021 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival performance, featuring a unique retrospective of Elizabeth Streb’s work from the ’70s and ’80s alongside bonus behind-the-scenes and archival content.

The family-friendly performance will feature nearly 50 minutes of STREB Extreme Action Company’s performance on the outdoor stage at Jacob’s Pillow this summer, marking the company’s first return in over 20 years. The works included STREB’s signature style: bravery and sheer athleticism.

The company revisits a number of its early works, including a collection of founder and artistic director Elizabeth Streb’s classic solos from the 1970s-80s and several of her early equipment experiments from the 90s, placing them in direct contrast with the jaw-dropping extreme action opuses and large scale “action machines” the company has become known for in the 21st century. 

Explore past Pillow Performances and Essays on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive:

• Elizabeth Streb in Little Ease (1985) in 1997
• Multimedia Essay: Women in Dance: Elizabeth Streb by Maura Keefe

This event took place June 12, 2021.

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A Virtual Gala to Benefit Jacob’s Pillow
Saturday, June 12 | 7pm EDT

Streaming on-demand through Saturday, June 19 at 7pm EDT

Dance has persisted all over the world this past year—in kitchens, in bedrooms, on street corners, and in nature. At a time when many international borders are closed and travel is constrained, Jacob’s Pillow invites audiences from around the world to connect for a virtual, global celebration of dance. Global Pillow visits Pillow friends and companies around the world, finds out how they are thinking about the future, and sees what they’ve been making while we have been separated. 

This unforgettable event features performances by Black Grace (New Zealand), Candoco Dance Company (United Kingdom), Companhia Urbana de Dança (Brazil), Germaine Acogny (Senegal), Hong Kong Ballet (Hong Kong), Nederlands Dans Theater (Netherlands), Nrityagram Dance Ensemble (India), Paris Opera Ballet (France), and others.

Global Pillow also features Dormeshia, the recipient of the 2021 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, who premieres a new work.

For 89 years, Jacob’s Pillow has served as an international crossroads for dancers and all who love dance, a place deeply rooted in the local community but with a global reach. After canceling our Festival in 2020 for the first time in our history, and losing our beloved Doris Duke Theatre in a November fire, we have worked to keep the dance community around the world engaged and connected. We ask for your support as we bring artists and audiences safely back together again for Festival 2021, evolve our digital platform, renovate the Ted Shawn Theatre so that it is equipped for artists and audiences post-COVID, and rebuild our lost theater. 

Global Pillow is free and available on demand through June 19 at 7pm EDT. Pre-registration is required.

Audio description provided by Gravity Access Services.

Jacob’s Pillow will donate a portion of the net proceeds from the event to support the educational programs of the Ohketeau Cultural Center, a new center for Indigenous arts and community located in Ashfield, MA serving central and Western MA and beyond; and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund, providing catalytic support to advance the careers of regional dance artists.

Dance Party: Join us after the Global Pillow premiere on June 12 for a celebratory dance party hosted by the incomparable duo of Christal Brown, Founding Artistic Director of INSPIRIT, and New York-based DJ DP One. Free and open to all. Hosted on Zoom. RSVP to the Dance Party here.

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Special Pre-Show Packages

Special Pre-Show Packages are available at $5,000 and $10,000. Each package features a private Zoom room that opens at 6:15pm EST for 2 hosts and up to 8 guests. This 45-minute gathering space includes a 10-minute visit from an artist dear to Jacob’s Pillow. Host and guests receive Global Pillow outdoor seat cushions, plus a set of hors d’oeuvres recipes from the international companies participating in the event. Hosts also receive Pillow wine glasses and Pillow baseball caps. All Special Package holders are listed as part of the Gala Committee on our website and acknowledged on screen during the streamed event. Special Package holders at the $10,000 level are also acknowledged as a sponsor of one of the companies performing at the event.

For more information or to purchase a pre-show package, please contact Ina Clark, Jacob’s Pillow Director of Philanthropy, at [email protected].

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Global Pillow Committee

* Member of the Jacob’s Pillow Board of Trustees

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“Global Pillow” logo features artwork by Ivan Chermayeff.

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Special Thanks to our Event Producer:

This event took place across Berkshire county from July 31 to August 8, 2021.

Free Pillow Pop-Ups around Berkshire County over two weekends. Pack a blanket or your favorite outdoor chair, invite your family and friends, and bring a snack to enjoy this 45 minute pop-up performance in a park near you!

Performances happened on a uniquely designed portable stage and featured local performers, as well as the all-female intergenerational Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective (July 31 – August 1) known for illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop and Philadelphia-based Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble (August 7-8) dedicated to preserving the traditional dance and music of West Africa and the African diaspora.

BECKET

Location: North Becket Park – Maple Street
Performance Dates and Times:
Saturday July 31 at 1pm
Sunday August 8 at 5pm

GREAT BARRINGTON

Location: Town Hall Park
Performance Dates and Times:
Sunday August 1 at 5pm
Sunday August 8 at 1pm

NORTH ADAMS

Location: River Grove Park – Corner of River & Houghton St.
Performance Dates and Times:
Sunday August 1 at 1pm
Saturday August 7 at 5pm

PITTSFIELD

Location: The Common, 100 First St
Performance Date and Time: Saturday July 31 at 5pm

Location: Rosemary and Reverend Willard Durant Park, 30 John St
Performance Date and Time: Saturday August 7 at 1pm

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Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective, LDC, is an all female intergenerational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power and diversity of women in Hip-Hop. Ever present in the work is the freestyle, ciphering, dancing with your family… call and response aspects of cultural dance forms that serve as the essence of street and club dance culture; while still exploring the space of cultural forms in proscenium performance. Founded by director and choreographer Michele Byrd-McPhee, LDC creates collaborative works that celebrate and center feminist narratives examining the intersections of gender, race, and resistance.

Black Dancing Bodies Project
Led by Ladies of Hip-Hop Executive Director Michele Byrd-McPhee and LOHH Chairwoman, LaTasha Barnes, this intersectional project captures the knowledge, beauty, and power of Black female street dancers. It seeks to look beyond the traditional lens of exposure for Black bodies in dance, which has overwhelmingly focused on Eurocentric dance aesthetics, including modern, contemporary, and ballet.

Launched in 2018, The Black Dancing Bodies Project is an ongoing documentary effort to represent Black women in street and club dance culture (including street and club dance, hip-hop, house dance, Waacking, and Lite Feet) through a series of sessions that include photography and interviews.

Addressing the erasure, miscoding, and often intentional exclusion of Black women in art, BDB has embarked on the journey to collect, preserve and tell the stories of these women. This intersectional transgenerational project captures the knowledge, beauty, and power of Black female street dancers that looks beyond the traditional lens of exposure for Black bodies in dance.

This project is of immense importance for the continued empowerment of women working in the world’s most popular culture, Hip-Hop. Women remain underrepresented in Hip-Hop, and current representations often negatively impact women’s sense of self-worth within the community. The need for women-led change to the culture is relevant now more than ever.

This project specifically focuses on Black women as a subset within the overall narrative and mission; however, it is just as important to achieving equity in the arts.

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Inspired by the voices of its ancestors, Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble preserves, presents and perpetuates the traditional dance and music of West Africa and the African Diaspora. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Kulu Mele’s performance repertoire features authentic, traditional dance and drumming from West Africa, Cuba and the African Diaspora, as well as contemporary American hip hop. Kulu Mele performs year-round throughout Philadelphia and tours nationally and internationally. Kulu Mele has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall at The Los Angeles Music Center, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at UPenn and – now and in 2015 – at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. In September, 2015, Kulu Mele performed as part of the official entertainment during the Philadelphia visit of Pope Francis. Founded in 1969 by celebrated percussionist Robert Crowder, 50-year-old-Kulu Mele has been led by artistic director Dorothy Wilkie for more than three decades.

Lead sponsor: Mill Town Capital

Please scroll down for event dates and times, or visit our Calendar for all upcoming events.

This digital screening took place September 2-16, 2021. Scroll for bonus content!

Taking flight by pushing the boundaries of aesthetics and kinesthetic bravery, MacArthur Award-winning choreographer Elizabeth Streb is known for “her loud, unflinching explorations of physics” and has, “devised what looks like her own Olympic sport” (The New York Times). 

Returning to the Pillow for the first time in over 20 years, the STREB Extreme Action Company revisits their roots with a retrospective of Elizabeth Streb’s classic solos from the 70s and 80s, early equipment experimentations from the 90s, and jaw-dropping extreme action opuses with the large scale “action machines” the company has since become known for from the early 21st century. This historic look back connects their experimental path with the extreme action of their current and future works.

This engagement was made possible by Gerry and Hank Alpert
In Memory and Honor of their Dear Friend
AT Nguyen

Explore STREB

Watch the Post-Show Talk

Choreographer/Action Architect Elizabeth Streb, Associate Artistic Director Cassandre Joseph, and Technical Director/Emcee/DJ Zaire Baptiste, in conversation with Jacob’s Pillow Scholar-in-Residence Maura Keefe.

Watch the PillowTalk

A true original in the performing arts, Elizabeth Streb discusses her concepts of extreme action, which challenge the assumptions of art, aging, injury, gender, and human possibility.

Read the Program and PillowNotes

Performance details begin on page 20.

View all Festival 2021 program books

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive

This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more from STREB on JPDI:

• STREB in Little Ease in 1997