Stephen Petronio at Jacob’s Pillow

The Last Dances

By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 28, 2025

Stephen Petronio Company
It Ends Like This
Ted Shawn Theatre/ McCain Stage
Jacob’s Pillow
July 23-27, 2025

Artistic Director and Choreographer, Stephen Petronio
Assistant to the Artistic Director, Gino Grenek
Dancers; Larissa Asebedo, Liviya England, Eleni Loving, Taylor Massa, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Isaiah Newby, Ryan Pliss, Deniz Erkan Sancak, Nicholas Sciscione

Broken Man (2002)
Music, Blixa Bargeld
Costume, Tara Subkoff/ Imitation of Christ
Lighting, Ken Tabachnick
Dancer, Nicholas Sciscione

Bud (2005)
Choreography, Stephen Petronio
Music, Oh What a World by Rufus Wainwright and Maurice Joseph Ravel
Costumes, Tara Subkoff/ Imitation of Christ
Lighting, Ken Tabachnick
Performed by Isaiah Newby and Ryan Pliss

Middlesexgorge (1990)
Choreography, Stephen Petronio
Music, Ambitious Plus, by Wire, Original music produced by Gareth Jones, Remix by Paul Kendall and Wire
Staging by Gino Grenek and Gerald Casel
Costumes by H. Petal
Lighting, Ken Tabachnick
Performed by the Company

Chair-Pillow (1969)
Choreography, Yvonne Rainer
Music, River Deep Mountain High, Ike and Tina Turner, produced by Phil Spector
Staging, Pat Catterson
Lighting, Joe Doran
Performed by The Company

Another Kind of Steve (2024)
Choreography, Stephen Petronio
Music, J.S. Bach, Violin Partita No 2 in D Minor, Allemande, Jennifer Koh
Costume, H. Petal
Lighting, Ken Tabachnick

American Landscapes (2019)
Choreography, Stephen Petronio
Original Music, Jozef van Wissem and Jim Jarmush
Images, Robert Longo
Costumes H. Patel
Lighting, Ken Tabachnick
Projection designer, Don Cieslik
Curator, Jill Brienza
Performed by The Company

There was melancholic pleasure in attending the serene and at times erotic final performance of the forty-year-long Stephen Petronio Company. Truly, it was a mesmeric occasion, with overwhelming love and support from the audience in the legendary Ted Shawn Theatre.

Introducing the company, Pamela Tatge, artistic director of Jacob’s Pillow, stated that when she learned of plans to disband the company she and her staff insisted on shaping a program that would best represent the range of one of the legendary, post modern companies that emerged around Judson Church in New York. They sprung from the older Merce Cunniungham/ John Cage collaborations.

Without formal dance training Petronio studied improvisation and movement at Hampshire College. The Jersey boy was the first in his family to pursue higher education and he had the loving support of his father who questioned his public obsession with a gay identity. Self described as a 69-year-old queer white male it informs his work and commitment as a husband, father, and recently, grand father.

Covid ravished the arts as AIDS had previously. Things got rough for small dance companies and now Trump has shut down the NEA and NEH. In the wake of which there has been a seismic shift in private funding sources. That has meant more time fundraising and less time for creating new work or spending time with his family.

Liquidating resources meant funding one final season. It was poignant and heart wrenching yesterday to see the curtain fall on that decades long commitment. There will be commissions for new work as well as archiving his choreography which will be available for leasing. There is a future and, unburdened by supporting a company, he is looking forward to new possibilities.

With a degree from Hampshire College he auditioned with New York companies and proved to be the first male dancer with Trisha Brown. It was a lively era of breaking down all the barriers of modern dance. While Cunningham was inventive but disciplined the late 1960s were a time of anything goes open to untrained or uniquely trained dancers like Petronio. His company initiated the Bloodlines component to present these pioneers to new audiences. On this occasion there was a vintage piece by Yvonne Rainer.

His peers included Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, David Gordon, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Fred Herko, Elaine Summers, William Davis, and Ruth Emerson among others.

The program commenced with two brief works; the anguished solo, Broken Man ( 2002) and an erotic duet for male dancers, Bud (2005). During the run at Pillow Broken Man was performed by six different dancers. Yesterday it was arrestingly danced by Nicholas Scicione.

Standing in place, within the confines of a square of light, it is mostly about tormented upper body movements and an occasional outward turn. The music was simple, percussive piano music by Blixa Bargeld. The costume entailed black pants and a white shirt with a jacket hanging from one shoulder.

This introduction to Petronio’s movement became more familiar when there was a similar solo by the master later in this program.

In 2005 Bud may have been more shocking and innovative than it is today. Scantily clad in red briefs there is erotic engagement from the male dancers set to music by Rufus Wainwright and Maurice Joseph Ravel. Petronio has talked about the mandate of putting sex on stage.

Consider the shocked Parisian audience when Vaslav Nijinski premiered L'Après-midi d'un faune with music by Claude Debussy in 1912.

When the AIDS epidemic was devastating young men it was initially mishandled by New York’s administration and health services. Petronio joined street demonstrations of the Act Up movement. He was arrested, lifted up, and carted off to jail. There was an outcry of support from demonstrators. It proved to be a cathartic moment in his life and career.

That merged in the 1990 masterpiece Middlesexgorge. To an anguished techno score the dancers clash on stage in varying combinations. The costumes are provocative with men in corsets with bare buttocks. The women are attired in black leotards. They dance with bare feet. There are soloists who assault and morph with other dancers. There are many variations of solo, duet, trio and groups. An individual may impact and move others or in turn be absorbed by them. It’s an aggressive unsettling work and we hear bits of phrases indicative of oppressive forces of the time. While difficult to follow and understand the breath of the piece its overall direct impact is palpable.

Four years later there was a sharply negative response to an AIDS themed work by the Bill T. Jones / Arne Zane Company.

In the New York Times on October 21, 2024, Gia Kourlas recalled.

” It landed like a bomb.

“Discussing the Undiscussable,” a 1994 New Yorker essay by the dance critic Arlene Croce, started off with a sentence that blew the minds of many: ‘I have not seen Bill T. Jones’s ‘Still/Here’ and have no plans to review it.’

“But she did decide to write about the work, which was inspired by people living with terminal illness, including AIDS. (Jones was H.I.V. positive.) In her contentious essay, Croce, one of the finest dance critics of the 20th century, railed against what she called victim art: 'By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. I think of him as literally undiscussable — the most extreme case among the distressingly many now representing themselves to the public not as artists but as victims and martyrs.' "

Let that serve as a marker of how far we have come and what creators like Petronio and Jones were up against. We have evolved to the point of being able to accept radical work like Middlesexgorge in the context of a retrospective. Note how the radical evolves to mainstream. It underscores how the iconic work makes us respond and evolve. That’s a never ending ongoing process. I am grateful to Pillow for presenting this seminal historic work.

As part of Bloodlines the vintage Chair-Pillow (1969) by Yvonne Rainer was presented. I just loved everything about it starting with the iconic music. River Deep Mountain High was unique to Ike and Tina Turner. It is a singular, monumental work by the mad genius of rock, Phil Spector. Through multi tracking he created a “wall of sound.” We also hear that technique in the Pet Sounds sessions (1966) of Brian Wilson.

The “dance” by Rainer could not be more ironic, direct and inventive. This work typically stretched the post modern notion of dance itself. In casual, uncredited costumes the company appears on stage with folding chairs and pillows. They sit, interact with pillows in sync with the music, then toss them behind. Standing, they move the chairs laterally, retrieve the pillows, sit, and repeat the action. It was such great fun.

From the back row as the company left he came forward and sat at the edge of the stage. It was Petronio who engaged with the audience in a delightfully revealing and informative manner. This unique encounter was a part of the rite of passage of this legacy program. He was transparent about his struggles and persona. He talked about his saga to become a challenging husband. Which, with roaring audience response, he stated he will not give up his marriage license for anybody. (You know who.)

That elided into his talking solo to Bach Another Kind of Steve. This entailed the fluid, ever changing, style that we observed by company dancers. It is always fascinating to see choreographers- Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones, Petronio- as soloists. It reveals the essence of their style and invention. In this case it was most absorbing that he continued conversing with more compelling details. He stated “My favorite thing is to disappear.” Then he did precisely that. What a fascinating way to end it all.

Before the fade to black, there was a final piece American Landscapes (2019). It highlighted the many collaborations between visual artists and dancers. The young Robert Rauschenberg toured with Cunningham and Cage designing inventive costumes and sets. He later ‘Danced’ on roller-skates.

To fund the company and set up a legacy fund, in recent years, Petronio sold a number of works by prominent artists which had been gifted to him. Among them was Robert Longo who collaborated on this piece. A reviewer misidentified them as photographs. In fact the projections were elaborately detailed, hyper realist renderings of black and white photographs. I saw stages as this work evolved at Metro Pictures in New York.

His images are in the tradition of Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and photographers of the Depression era for Farm Security Administration. While in recovery from heart issues Richard Avedon had a project In the American West. Longo's images may be contextualized in these traditions. Many have taken on the project of defining America through pictures of it. 

It is interesting to see this approach elided with movement as a kind of portrait of America. Again, it is a large and complex work which is best taken as a whole. The dancers interact with images of the American flag, whole and then later tattered, breaking waves, the mushroom clouds of Atomic bombs, a rose, and grisaille, dark toned landscapes. A dancer appears wrapped in an American flag. Later dancers come out with streaming diversity themed flags.  The challenge of any given moment is to focus on the slide show of images and corresponding movement.

We were witnesses to dance history at Jacob’s Pillow for which I am truly grateful.