Dance
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Martha Graham Company Returns to Jacob's Pillow
Program Combines Old and New Works
By: - Aug 16th, 2019The greatest modernist dancer and choreographer of her generation, Martha Graham (1894-1991), had a long and unique connection to Jacob’s Pillow. This week the company she founded in 1926 is making its fifth posthumous appearance in the Berkshires. The program combines old and new, her own work and that of other women choreographers.
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Tanz im August, Berlin 2018
Dance in August Ended September 2nd
By: - Sep 09th, 2018One of the big international dance festivals, the Berlin based Tanz im August, celebrated its 30th anniversary with a thought-provoking and breath-taking array of works.
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Summary of 86th Jacobs Pillow Season
$2.5 Million in Ticket Sales for 500 Performances and Events
By: - Oct 09th, 2018One month after the close of its 86th season, Jacob’s Pillow announces record-breaking ticket sales for its acclaimed summer dance festival. The organization reports over $2.5 million in ticket sales, an increase of 13% when compared with 2017; over 40,000 tickets were sold, an increase of 5%, when compared with last year. The season boasts 10,000 unique ticket buyers, an increase of 8% and the largest number since the organization began tracking this particular indicator in 2005.
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Satyagarha by Philip Glass at BAM
Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör Add to the Meditation
By: - Nov 01st, 2018The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Not every opera can be mounted by a circus troop, but the forms are complimentary. When they meld, as they do here, it is a thrilling evening of theater. Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör from Sweden brings a matching visual rhythm and pace to the classical forms of Glass and extend our sense of this meditation on pacifism
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Phantom Limb Company at BAM
Next Wave Festival Presents A Different Wave
By: - Nov 10th, 2018The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.
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Alvin Ailey Company's 60th Anniversary
Evening of Robert Battle's Choreography
By: - Dec 29th, 2018Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrating its 60th Anniversary. An improbable start at the same time the civil rights movement was heating up has led to the company's pre-eminent position in dance. Audiences are of all hues and all ages. This year has concluded at their City Center home in New York.
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Tao and Teicher at the Guggenheim Museum
World Premiere of More Forever
By: - Jan 07th, 2019Caleb Teicher is no stranger to Jacob's Pillow. This summer he will perform More Forever, which had its world premiere at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this weekend. It is a glorious piece developed in collaboration with pianist, composer and actor Conrad Tao.
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Non Solus at BAM
Circus Dance from Hungary
By: - Feb 15th, 2019The Recirquel Company Budapest is presenting Non Solus at the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM. The front of the stage is swathed in a glimmering material that reflects like plastic and moves like silk. Behind the curtain, misty lights of yellow and white are haloed like a desert mirage. The translucent curtain billows and then collapses in waves of light and texture.
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Christie and Les Arts Florissants at BAM
Jean-Philipppe Rameau Delights
By: - Mar 04th, 2019William Christie and his Arts Florissant created two dance/opera entertainments by Jean-Philippe Rameau at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As usual, this group sells out in New York and it is easy to see why. Christie conducts with poise and precision. He enlists a first rate ensemble of musicians to perform period music. To this is added stylized dance and gorgeous operatic voices. In the second one act dance/opera, La Naissance d'Osiris, we saw and heard a divertissement of dances, the gavotte, sarabande and minuet among them.
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Colombian-Belgian Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
Recipient of 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.
By: - Mar 20th, 2019Jacob’s Pillow announces that internationally sought-after Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is the recipient of the 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.
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Compania Irene Rodriguez
Post Modern Flamenco at Jacob's Pillow
By: - Jul 01st, 2019In 2017 Compania Irene Rodriguez sold out its first booking in the smaller Doris Duke Theatre. They have now completed a sensational engagement on the Ted Shawn main stage. The Cuban company was formed in 2012 with a mandate to create a fusion of traditional flamenco with other forms of Afro Cuban music and dance. This is a company destined to make many visits to Jacob's Pillow.
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Yang Liping's Under Seige at Mostly Mozart
Stunning Dance at the David Koch Theater
By: - Aug 11th, 2019Yang Liping has created a dance drama in such startling colors and designs that the audience is swept into the single Ancient Pipa melody of the same title. The tapping of swords, soldiers cries and horses whinnying and snorting are all suggested as the song portrays the end battle of the war for control of China in 205 B.C. The armies of the Chu and the Han face off in dance. Blood has never been so beautifully suggested, as a mass of red feathers fly through the air, some streaking the bodies of soldiers.
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Blck, Whyte, Gray at Mostly Mozart Festival
British Hip Hop Takes Us Deep into Dance
By: - Aug 03rd, 2019Blck, Whyte, Gray is performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival, a clear invitation for a wide swathe of ethnic groups to join the Festival audience, and also a pleasure and a revelation for regulars. Advance notice was served at the White Light Festival last fall, when Blck, Whyte, Gray was a smash hit of the Festival.
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Mark Morris 20 Plus Years at Jacob's Pillow
A Program of Old and New Work
By: - Jul 19th, 2019With more that 20 bookings no company has logged more appearances at Jacob's Pillow. For the first time in five years Mark Morris Dance Group & Music Ensemble is back this week. In recent years it has been the only dance company to be featured a number of times at Tanglewood. Now sliding past middle age, however, the choreographer is challenged to maintain pole position on the cutting edge. It was heartening to see a new piece in a program of vintage works.
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A Mark Morris Concert at Mostly Mozart
Satie, Ives and Schumann at the Rose Theater
By: - Jul 13th, 2019Mark Morris is as serious about music as anyone. A questioner dared to state that of course music performed for dance was not up to concert expectations. Morris quickly took exception. His standards are the highest. He expects the music to be performed as written by the composer. He decried excessive rubatos. Yet Morris is as impish as Eric Satie. Satie's Sports and divertissements inspired a world premiere commissioned by Mostly Mozart.
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Dance Theatre of Harlem
50th Anniversary Performance at Jacob's Pillow
By: - Jul 12th, 2019From the High School of Music and Art the young Arthur MItchell rose to become a principal dancer in George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. Responding to the death of Dr. Martin Luther KIng, Jr., fifty years ago with Karel Shook they founded Dance Theatre of Harlem. The company first appeared at Jacob's Pillow in 1970. This week they returned with a diverse program in tribute to Mitchell who passed away last September.
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Compagnie CNDC-Angers/ Robert Swinston
Celebrating Merce Cunningham Centennial at Jacob's Pillow.
By: - Jul 08th, 2019For his centennial Jacob’s Pillow presented three dances by the avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919-2009). The “music” featured his collaborator and life partner John Cage (1912-1992). In July, 2009 we attended the final performance at Jacob’s Pillow by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Several days later, on July 26, he passed away.
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Ronald K. Brown's Evidence Troop at Bard
Classic Grace is Followed by Premiere of Mercy
By: - Jul 07th, 2019Ronald K. Brown’s classic Grace was mounted in the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center of Bard. For the first time, accompanying music was live, an adaptation of the tapes usually run with the dance. Grace was followed by a world premiere of Mercy, a work commissioned by SummerScape at Bard among others.
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Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival 2018
Reflections on Performances
By: - Aug 28th, 2018There are a series of reviews written on BFA by Charles Giuliano this summer about the many magnificent dance companies who were in residence at Jacob's Pillow in 2018. Here are my memories of some of their performances as poetry.
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Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2018
Conflating Old and New in Becket
By: - Dec 13th, 2017International companies will travel to Becket, Massachusetts, from Denmark, Israel, Belgium, Australia, France, Spain, and Scotland. Notably, representation from across the United States ranges from New York City, Minneapolis, and Houston to Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago, among others.
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Jacob's Pillow 2017
Schedule for 85th Season in Becket
By: - Dec 14th, 2016Following the critical acclaim and record-breaking attendance of Festival 2016, Jacob’s Pillow Dance announces its 85th Anniversary Season of exciting programming featuring world premieres, commissions, site-specific work, international artists, live music, and Pillow-exclusive engagements. Running June 21-August 27, Festival 2017 marks a notable moment in the history of the organization, with the first season programmed by Jacob’s Pillow Director Pamela Tatge who joined the organization in April of 2016.
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Flexn at Jacob's Pillow
The Arts and Black Lives Matter
By: - Aug 21st, 2016More than a dance company the appearance by Flexn, with its related panels and talk back, proved to be an aesthetic and political movment illustrating through inventive dance why Black Lives Matter.
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Dorrance Dance at Jacob’s Pillow
Tapping Into New Possibilities
By: - Aug 12th, 2016Based on last year's collaboration with Toshi Reagon's band Big Lovely yesterday's performance of Dorrance Dance was, for us, the most anticipated of the Jacob's Pillow season. Michelle Dorrance is celebrated for pushing the limits of the indigenous, vernacular art form of tap dancing. Collaborating with the musician and inventor Nicholas Van Young there seemed too much emphasis on sound at the sacrifice of dance.
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Compagnie Herve Koubi
Conflating Sufi and Bach at Jacob's Pillow
By: - Aug 05th, 2016At the end of the hour long piece Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (What the Day Owes the Night) choreographed by Herve Koubi the cycle of a single day finds closure in gradual darkening signifying night.
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Twist's Symphonie Fantastique at HERE
O'Riley's Liszt and Anniversaries Galore
By: - Apr 06th, 2018It's Berlioz. It's puppets. It's a supershow. The twentieth anniversary production of Basil Twist's remarkable Symphonie Fantastique is at the ever enterprising and surprising HERE in New York. Christopher O'Riley performs Liszt's piano transcription of Berlioz's love letter/nightmare. Twist performs his magic in an aquarium filled with 1,000 gallons of water.
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