Remembering the Duke

March 31, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Hosted on Zoom

Join Jacob’s Pillow and the dance community in commemorating the Doris Duke Theatre and the artists, audience, and memories that filled the space with joy and art for thirty years. You are invited to hear tributes, join in a collective moment of movement, and witness the first screening of a film by Liz Sargent, Eiko Otake, and Minos Papas captured on the Pillow’s site days after the fire.

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The Doris Duke Theatre, opened in 1990 as one of three primary performance spaces on Jacob’s Pillow’s 220-acre campus in Western Massachusetts, was lost to a structure fire the morning of November 17, 2020 beginning around 5am Eastern. The fire was contained to the building; no one was injured and no other buildings suffered damage. Details on the incident can be found here.

In the aftermath of the fire, Jacob’s Pillow received a tremendous outpouring of support from artists and audiences around the world. The Pillow was able to commit to move several of its on-site, COVID-compliant residences for dance companies that had been scheduled in the theater between December and May into The Perles Family Studio, the other year-round rehearsal space on campus.

Jacob’s Pillow is at the early stages of planning to rebuild the Doris Duke Theatre and has hired an external consultant to conduct interviews with artists, technicians, and audiences members as initial research. “Our hope is to build a theater that has all of the warmth and character of the Doris Duke Theatre while providing for the needs of artists and audiences in the 21st century,” says Executive & Artistic Director Pamela Tatge. Learn more about the reimagined Doris Duke Theatre here.

 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Zoe Scofield

June 10, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

A co-presentation with MASS MoCA

Zoe Scofield, a dance and visual artist whose work often incorporates complex multimedia elements, will be in residence at nearby presenting partner MASS MoCA with additional funding and support provided by Jacob’s Pillow. During her residency, Scofield will continue to develop The Other Shore, a dance, video, and sound performance (originally developed in a 2018 Pillow Lab). Designed for a non-proscenium space, The Other Shore redesigns the relationship between audience and performer by literally shifting the audience’s perspective, creating a work that is viewed from lying on the ground. This shift of orientation expands notions of power, and of how and where dance can exist in space and time. Scofield is also developing a Virtual Reality version of The Other Shore to be experienced at home, as well as a durational installation version with the audience free to move about while a soloist performs a ritual for an extended period. Based in Seattle, Washington since 2002, Zoe Scofield is the Co-Artistic Director and choreographer of zoe | juniper (zj), a dance and visual arts team comprised of Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, Scofield has been commissioned by and presented work at Jacob’s Pillow, On the Boards, Dance Theater Workshop/NYLA, ICA Boston, The Joyce Theater, and others.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

About MASS MoCA’s Artist-in-residence program

For over two decades, MASS MoCA has been one of the nation’s most productive venues for nurturing and creating new art—especially art which requires sophisticated equipment, generous spaces, and extended time—by offering excellent infrastructure and professional support and facilities. Over 500 artists have participated in extensive artist-in-residence and technical workshops including Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, William Kentridge, Helga Davis, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne/Fatboy Slim/Annie-B Parson, and many others.

In response to the new needs of artists in the wake of COVID-19, MASS MoCA has dramatically expanded its residency program, providing vital opportunities for artists to come together safely to create new work under these extraordinary circumstances.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Music from the Sole

May 20, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Directed by tap dancer and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval (recently named one of “25 to Watch” in 2021 by Dance Magazine) and composer and multi-instrumentalist Gregory Richardson, Music from the Sole is a ten-member tap dance and live music ensemble. Richardson, who is the co-musical director of Dorrance Dance, and Sandoval, a dancer with the company, incorporate various Afro-diasporic dance and music styles in their creations with Music from the Sole, drawing on traditions from Sandoval’s native Brazil such as passinho (Brazilian funk) and samba as well as house and other social dances. These juxtapositions allow not only for insight into the similarities and common roots of different styles, but also for the development of narratives and questions surrounding race, cultural identity, and the intersectionality of the Black experience. During their Pillow Lab residency, Richardson, Sandoval, and their ensemble will continue developing a new work commissioned by Guggenheim Works and Process.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE

May 6, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

2020 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and frequent Festival artist Ronald K. Brown will return to the Pillow with his ensemble to develop The Equality of Night and Day, a new work examining balance, equity, and fairness in light of the conflicts and issues that young people, women, and people of color face amidst rising exploitation, gentrification, racism, and xenophobia. The Equality of Night and Day, which draws its title from the two times a year when day and night are nearly equal in length, will portray ease and disruption, peace and rapture, awakening and effort, resolving in an honest reflection of reality. With an original score by Jason Moran, text by Angela Davis, and visuals curated by Deborah Willis, the project will result from a collaborative process that includes conversations via artistic expression about shared responsibility and safety, among other timely themes. Brown is celebrated for his pioneering work portraying the struggles, tragedies, and triumphs of the African-American community through dance for more than three decades. A highly sought-after choreographer, he has created over 100 works for his own company, in addition to companies like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, PHILADANCO, and Ballet Hispánico.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
INSPIRIT

April 22, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

INSPIRIT began as a performance ensemble and educational conglomerate dedicated to gathering female choreographers to collaborate, show new works, and expand perceptions of women. Founding Artistic Director Christal Brown’s vision has grown to encompass an all-male ensemble and to contribute to the legacies of JoyeMovement, Angela’s Pulse, Sydnie L. Mosley and Dancers, Brotherhood Dance, and Maverick Dance Ensemble. Brown has an extensive history as a performer, appearing with Chuck Davis’ African-American Dance Ensemble, Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks, and Gesel Mason Performance Projects as well as apprenticing with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company before finding a home with Urban Bush Women, where she spent three seasons as a principal performer and community specialist. Brown will continue work on a multiyear project entitled What We Ask of Flesh, which began in collaboration with poet and scholar Remica Bingham. Aligning Bingham’s text with personal narratives, soundscapes by Farai Malianga, and the clarifying eye of dramaturg Arielle Brown, What We Ask of Flesh delivers a comprehensive analysis of the capacity of a human life.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Nélida Tirado

April 15, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Hailed by The New York Times as “magnificent” and “utterly compelling,” flamenco dancer Nélida Tirado is internationally recognized for her intensity, natural grace, and powerful style. In Dime Quién Soy, Tirado embarks on a triumphant and challenging journey “dancing between cultures” in celebration of her authentic self. This non-traditional flamenco work uses music and dance to transcend and blur the lines of politics, race, and identity. Based in New York City, Tirado choreographs, performs, and teaches, earning accolades such as Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” and presenting her work at venues such as Joe’s Pub, Joyce Soho, Symphony Space, and many others including an appearance in the forthcoming film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In The Heights. During her Pillow Lab residency, Tirado and collaborators will continue development on Dime Quién Soy, an exploration of flamenco and identity that offers a prismatic perspective on politics, race, and diaspora through her own lived experience.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Taylor Stanley

February 18, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Already a celebrated principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, Taylor Stanley had a breakout moment in 2018 with what Dance Magazine called an “epic” performance in Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, a commission for NYCB that featured Stanley dancing to music by Jay-Z and Kanye West. Stanley now joins a growing number of ballet stars who are pursuing new movement frontiers, coming to the Pillow with a team of artists including Lloyd Knight (Martha Graham Dance Company), Jacquelin Harris (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), Allysen Hooks (Gallim Dance), and Ned Sturgis (Dušan Týnek Dance Theater) in a new Pillow-commissioned ensemble work by postmodern choreographer Jodi Melnick. Recent Pillow Lab artist and 2020 Guggenheim Fellow Shamel Pitts will also choreograph a solo for Stanley. With an unpretentious movement style noted as being “elegantly forceful…calm, confident, divinely cool,” (Brian Seibert, The New York Times) Stanley is a natural fit for these exploratory contemporary ventures.

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Dorrance Dance

January 14, 2021 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Dorrance Dance returned to Jacob’s Pillow for two weeks at the end of 2020 to develop new choreography and music, celebrating their first in-person rehearsals together since March. Led by the artistic team of Michelle Dorrance, Josette Wiggan, and Nicholas Van Young, Dorrance Dance is one of the nation’s leading tap dance companies, exploring what is most thrilling, brilliant, and beautiful about tap dancing—that it is, at once, movement and music. 

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. 

The Pillow Lab, the Pillow’s year-round center for research and development, provides artists the crucial space and time in development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.

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“When I told my daughter we were going to a magical forest to dance, her eyes lit up and she began to jump and twirl. That’s exactly what the Pillow is for me. Sacred ground that stirs inspiration and connection. The memories and the art that are in the walls, wood, ground and trees are an embrace. You feel like you’re home.”
—Nicholas Van Young

“In a time where we’ve lost so much and suffered through so much, this residency is a breath of fresh air and a lifeline of sorts. As an artist, opportunities like this during a pandemic can be the difference between someone continuing their artistry or giving up. This process has been healing on so many levels.”
—Josette Wiggan

“This residency is nothing short of a blessing. Dance and rhythm are transformative. The Pillow and its magic are transformative. Our hearts, minds, spirits, and bodies are changed in this space together. I am so inspired by these artists I have the privilege of sharing this space with and so grateful for this support in a time that calls for revolutionary change.”
—Michelle Dorrance

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Shamel Pitts/TRIBE

December 10, 2020 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Shamel Pitts is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, and teacher. During his residency, Pitts will develop the second piece in his RED series, Touch of RED. An intensely personal duet performed by Pitts with Tushrik Fredericks, Touch of RED addresses the power of vulnerability and offers its dancers, two Black men, space to soften. As Pitts and Fredericks meet in a performance space akin to a gladiator’s arena, heat between them builds, not from aggression but rather from a healing, electrifying effeminacy.

TRIBE is a New York City-based arts collective dedicated to creating, developing, and sharing multidisciplinary art projects and inspired by the afro-futuristic movement. Artistic Director Shamel Pitts is a Guggenheim Fellow (2020), NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow (2019), and Princess Grace Award winner (2018). Born in Brooklyn, Pitts studied dance at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, The Ailey School, and The Juilliard School before beginning his dance career in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. He went on to dance with the Batsheva Dance Company for seven years, under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin. Pitts was the choreographer for the play Help by poet and playwright Claudia Rankine, directed by Taibi Magar at The Shed in New York. TRIBE is a 92Y Harkness Dance Center Artist In Residence for the 2020-2021 season.

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“Having access to the Pillow’s remote and focused environment, archives, housing, and the potential for a showing are each invaluable resources and opportunities for all of TRIBE, and we are incredibly grateful to have this support to nurture our work during these bizarre times.”
—Shamel Pitts

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This event is produced in collaboration with 

Inside the Pillow Lab:
Emily Johnson/Catalyst

NEW DATE: December 17, 2020 at 7pm Eastern | Screened on YouTube

Emily Johnson’s work is “a domain in which dream and memory and history meet in present-day… and reach out their arms to one another” (Deborah Jowitt, Arts Journal). In her first residency at the Pillow, Johnson will develop Being Future Being, a new, richly layered evening-length performance for the stage and beyond. Working with one other dancer as well as Indigenous scholars during her Pillow Lab residency, Johnson will later incorporate an ensemble of four Indigenous performers and a chorus of ten more-than-human creatures—an omnipresent collective adorned in futuristic garments crafted from community-sewn quilts, designed by Ojibwe textile artist Maggie Thompson. Being Future Being contains narrative elements from Johnson’s own family history, a commissioned score sung by a BIPOC community chorus, a soundscape by Diné composer Raven Chacon, and movement, projections, and scenic design that build a visual and aural landscape of Indigenous power. Being Future Being asks audiences to consider new stories with the power to sustain a world that must begin again, with the goal of igniting community stewardship.

Emily Johnson is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. Originally from Alaska and now based in New York, Johnson is of the Yup’ik Nation and since 1998 has made work that considers the experience of seeing and sensing performance. Her works have included opera (Doctor Atomic at the Santa Fe Opera, directed by Peter Sellars) and durational performance gatherings (Then A Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing At Stars, an all-night outdoor event that took place in the midst of 84 community-hand-made quilts, premiered on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), and have been presented across the United States and Australia. Johnson is a lead organizer of First Nations Dialogues and part of a US-based advisory group—including Reuben Roqueni, Ed Bourgeois, Lori Pourier, Ronee Penoi, and Vallejo Gantner—who are developing a Global First Nations Performance Network.

Jacob’s Pillow rests on the unceded lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok, and recognizes the Agawam, Nipmuc, and Pocumtuc who also made their homes in Western Massachusetts. We honor their Elders past, present, and future.

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“After months of navigating layered crises, the opportunity to return to the studio in an environment that is not only physically safe, but nestled in an inspiring and restorative natural environment, is a profound gift to any artists. I’m looking forward to being able to reconnect with my artistic practice and to recharge my creative resources.“
—Emily Johnson

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This event is produced in collaboration with