The Pillow Lab

Grisha Coleman | Technology Residency
October 1–12 in the Doris Duke Theatre
During her Pillow Lab residency in the new Doris Duke Theatre, dance and interdisciplinary artist Grisha Coleman developed THE MOVEMENT UNDERCOMMONS: Technology as Resistance | Future Archive. This project explores the cultural and expressive dimensions of human movement through mobile motion capture technology. While in residence, Coleman and her collaborators experimented with the installation of movement data ‘portraits’—time-based movement vignettes built from data—visualized and sonified to depict the beauty of everyday movement hiding in plain sight.
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Marjani Forté-Saunders | Developmental Residency
October 22 – November 5 in the Perles Family Studio
In her residency, Marjani Forté-Saunders developed float., a meditation and a study on the wondrous. In her words, “the word ‘wondrous’ evokes a sense of awe and admiration, often used to describe something extraordinarily beautiful, remarkable, or inspiring. It captures the essence of experiences or sights that leave one marveling at their splendor. The intuitive human entity is full of wonders.” float. contemplates the Zen Buddhist concept of clouds and water: to wondrously navigate the hurdles of a journey with a malleable and steady advancement. Through her creative, scientific, and technological research for float., Forté-Saunders engages the preternatural wonders of our central nervous systems weathering infinite change: love, loss, sensation, and—prayerfully—lift.
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Jerron Herman and Candace L. Feldman | Developmental Residency
November 17–23 in the Perles Family Studio
Choreographer and dancer Jerron Herman joined with longtime collaborator Candace L. Feldman to develop Many Ways to Raise a Fist, a full-length devised theater piece produced by INTERIM and featuring a fully disabled cast. Drawing from Aeschylus’ Oresteia, where justice and superego are entangled in an eternal battle, the play centers Pros, who sits marooned on a literal and metaphorical island awaiting a trial on his “thought crimes.” The piece is written and performed by Herman, based on a 2019 solo. This new extension welcomed multifaceted artists Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, vocalist/composer Molly Joyce, care and health attendant Leilani Cobb, co-producer and documentary director Whitney Davis, access designer Ezra Benus, performer Ogemdi Ude (not present, but present), and co-producer Steven Raider-Ginsburg (not present, but present). Together the ensemble, through litigation and Structuralism, devised defenses that interrogate the method and necessity of protest.
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A.I.M by Kyle Abraham | Developmental Residency
December 1–7 in the Perles Family Studio
During this Pillow Lab residency, choreographer Kyle Abraham created a new dance work for his company A.I.M entitled White Space, an evening-length dance-theater work for 12 dancers that makes space for humor, solitude, comfort and catastrophe. Equal parts a conversation and an intentional contradiction, White Space features an original commissioned score by composers Jason Moran and Nico Muhly, and explores the uncomfortable space of belonging and the often unwelcome acknowledgment of “the other.” This 50-plus minute dance work, rooted in a “post-modern gumbo” of social dance practices, questions what constitutes “contemporary experience”, and defines it as the casual and passive observance of what surrounds us, but more so our collective participation.
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mayfield brooks | Developmental Residency
January 21 – February 1 in the Perles Family Studio
During their Pillow Lab residency, choreographer mayfield brooks focused on the development of dArK oXyGen, a sonic dance exploring choreographies of breath and the recent discovery of oxygen production in the deep ocean without sunlight or photosynthesis. This project was inspired by the spiritual connection between brooks’ experience as a child singer of Black gospel music, their daily practice of communing with the ocean in Rockaway Beach, New York where they live, and their movement practice exploring dances moved by breath, water, memory, and song. dArK oXyGen plays with the possibility that entering darkness is a generative process. It is an exorcism of the machines that mine our minds, disconnecting us from the depths of our own psyches, and how that disconnection might be linked to the machines that mine our deep sea ecosystems.

Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group | Developmental Residency
February 11–22 in the Perles Family Studio
In this residency, choreographer Reggie Wilson returned to the Pillow to develop Sublimation of Clarity [working title], with contemporary interdisciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin as part of their multi-year collaboration. Wilson developed dance and kinesthetics, Galanin sound and visual elements, and together they created and weaved a unique soundscape for the new work that explores evocative and provocative questions and responses rooted in human experiences and life changes imposed by loss, personal grief, connections to the Mississippi Delta blues, perspectives of resilience, and ideas around the word “community.”
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slowdanger | Technical Production Residency
March 18–29 in the Doris Duke Theatre
During this Pillow Lab residency in the new Doris Duke Theatre, multidisciplinary performance group slowdanger developed STORY BALLET, a surreal dance theater quintet with an intergenerational cast, holographic projections, and live sound. The work reimagines Hector Berlioz’s 1830 Symphonie Fantastique as an evening-length performance exploring mental health, escapism, and the question: what holds us together? Berlioz’s original narrative objectifies “the woman” as an obsession; STORY BALLET queers this concept, reframing it as “dancing with the ghost of one’s self.” Five performers embody facets of a central character, each confronting obsessions and past selves, with noir lighting, Pepper’s ghost–style projections, and live sound underscoring the theme.