The Pillow Lab
Jacob's Pillow's year-round premiere dance center for research and development
What is the Pillow Lab?
The Pillow Lab is a residency program that supports U.S.-based and international dance artists during crucial development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects, and offers the opportunity to work in the Pillow’s retreat-like atmosphere, regenerative landscape, and state-of-the-art studio spaces. Built from the Jacob’s Pillow mission, the Pillow Lab strengthens the artistic core of the Pillow while expanding opportunities for year-round programming.
2025–26 Pillow Lab Artists
The 2025-26 Pillow Lab season includes residencies that bring national, local, and international artists to the Pillow’s site. Artists that take part in the Pillow Lab are chosen by Executive and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge, Associate Artistic Director Kim Chan, and Jacob’s Pillow Associate Curator Melanie George.
Jerron Herman and Candace L. Feldman
Residency: November 17-23, 2025
Showing: November 22, 2025
Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group
Residency: February 11-22, 2026
Showing: February 21, 2026
Types of Residencies
Residencies conclude with an informal showing or conversation inviting Members at the $500 level and above as well as faculty and students in the College Partnership Program to engage with artists behind-the-scenes.
Developmental Residencies
With a focus on exploration and rehearsal, artists use Developmental Residencies to deepen their ideas, refine choreography, and continue shaping a piece before it reaches its final stages.
Technical Production Residencies
When a work is nearing its premiere, artists benefit from a Technical Production Residency. With more staff and production resources than a developmental residency, these residencies support the final stages of shaping a new work.
Technology Residencies
Technology Residencies give artists the opportunity to experiment with emerging tools and innovations. These residencies provide time to test how technology can enhance both the creation of a dance work and the audience’s experience of it.
Attend Work-in-Progress Showings
Become a Member today to attend showings
About the Pillow Lab
Created in 2017, the Pillow Lab reimagined a residency program that has existed in various forms since the Pillow’s inception in the early 1930s. Built from a field-wide scan which included interviews with a diverse group of 36 U.S.-based choreographers and examined existing choreographic residency programs at peer institutions, the Pillow Lab fits into the overall national and international dance ecology with a distinctive mission, vision, set of values, and approach.
Creative development residencies have been offered to artists in past years, supporting hundreds of artists including Mark Morris and Yo-Yo Ma, Big Dance Theater, Kate Weare, Kyle Abraham, Jessica Lang, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, Bryan Arias, Suzanne Farrell, The Cambodian Project, Kimberly Bartosik, Jodi Melnick, Monica Bill Barnes, Chet Walker, John Jasperse, Dorrance Dance, and many more. A more robust and varied program is now possible through recent upgrades to facilities, including the opening of the Perles Studio, the new Doris Duke Theatre, and the addition of winterized housing, allowing for technical and research residencies as well as artistic.
Lead support for the Pillow Lab is provided by the Mellon Foundation
Major support for 2025-26 Pillow Labs is provided through the Arison Arts Foundation, the Vivian Jones Endowment Fund, Bossak Heilbron Charitable Foundation Endowed Fund, Carol Starr Fund to Promote Artistic Expression, Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, and with support from Valentine Talland and Nagesh Mahanthappa.