Jacob's Pillow

For PIXEL, by Compagnie Käfig, today based near Lyon, France, ten male Hip Hop dancers, French style, a woman contortionist, a roller-skater, small robots carrying tiny lights, and a huge metal hoop shared and interacted on stage with highly sophisticated projections, music, and sounds.

Jacob’s Pillow today announced the artists who will participate in 10 onsite residencies this fall through next summer, as part of the Pillow Lab residency program. Artists participating in this series, in chronological order, are: Ilya Vidrin, Sekou McMiller, LaJuné McMillian, Minty Fresh Circus, Aakash Odedra, Kyle Marshall Choreography, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, Hari Krishnan/inDANCE, Theresa Ruth Howard, and Miguel Gutierrez.

Now 47, the French Canadian dancer, artistic director, and choreographer Eric Gauthier joined Stuttgart Ballet in 1996, where he rose to the rank of soloist. Initially with six dancers, in 2007 he founded Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

Jacob's Pillow is pleased to announce programming for the eighth week of the 2023 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, when the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Graham’s Cave of the Heart and Errand Into the Maze, and Hofesh Shechter’s CAVE, in the Ted Shawn Theatre from Aug. 16-20.

For nearly three decades, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has thrilled audiences around the globe with its full-throttle, high-intensity performances on five continents and in over 20 countries, committed to its mission of “bringing unity to the world one dance at a time.” The diverse and inclusive company is made up of dancers “who blur lines and boundaries and exude an innate passion” (The Guardian). With their programs set to music from Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, Metallica, and Lenny Kravitz, the company reinvents ballet with a mix of methods, styles, and cultures that engages and delights. 

Jacob's Pillow launched its season with the Mark Morris Dance Group performing an hour long work Bacharach/ David's The Look of Love. During this soggy summer how apt that Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

Running June 28 through August 27, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival 2023 will feature nine weeks of performances in the Ted Shawn Theatre and on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage, as well as special events, parties, and pop up performances in Berkshire County. This season will offer the largest breadth of international performers since 2019, as well as multiple performances with live music, and dance styles ranging from hip hop and street dance to ballet and contemporary.

Groundbreaking choreographer Shamel Pitts doesn’t dance around big issues—instead, he dances into them.

Festival 2022, which will feature 10 weeks of on-site programming, opens June 22, and runs through August 28, attracting dance audiences from across the globe to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. The season-opening Gala will be held on June 18. The recipient of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and the gala program will be announced on March 15.

Jacob’s Pillow will offer two weekends of free Pillow Pop-Up performances in Berkshire County during the last weekend in July and first weekend in August. Performances will happen on a uniquely designed portable stage and feature local performers, as well as the all-female intergenerational Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective (July 31 – Aug. 1) known for illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop, and Philadelphia-based Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble (Aug. 7-8), dedicated to preserving the traditional dance and music of West Africa and the African diaspora.

Did you miss Global Pillow this weekend? There's still time to watch this global celebration of dance!

Elizabeth Streb, the high-octane choreographer known for such risk-taking --and horrifying - feats as setting herself on fire, crashing through glass, and walking down the outside of very tall buildings (London’s City Hall,) returns to the Pillow with her Extreme Action Company for the first time in twenty years.

Onsite events run June 30-August 29, with online streaming through September 23. Newly imagined—with the safety of artists, staff, and audiences at the forefront of all planning—the Festival will feature commissioned works and world premieres, present new site-specific performances created especially for the Pillow’s 220-acre campus, and engage hundreds of artists who have had incredibly limited performance opportunities for the last year.

Jacob's Pillow launches its 90th season with continuity as well as renovation and a Dance We Must fundraising campaign. It seeks to raise $2 million toward a goal of $22 million.

As an institution that seeks to unite people and communities by celebrating cultural diversity in dance, Jacob’s Pillow has an ongoing responsibility to challenge white supremacy and to disrupt systems of bias and oppression. For the Pillow, this includes bringing under-recognized artists and stories to our stages, including Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ artists, as well as increasing support to women choreographers and leaders of companies, and ensuring that people of color who have historically had limited or restricted access have robust opportunities to present, study, and develop work. 

Recently the Doris Duke Theatre of Jacob's Pillow was lost in a fire on November 17. You can help to rebuild this landmark of American dance in the Berkshires.

Today, November 17, there was a fire on the campus of Jacob's Pillow in Becket. The Doris Duke Theatre is lost. " We are grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world we have already received. We will rebuild,” says Pamela Tatge, Jacob’s Pillow Artistic & Executive Director.

Marjorie Celeste Belcher was born in Los Angeles in 1919. She was known as Marge Champion when she married her dance and life partner, Gower Champion, in 1947. They had two sons and divorced in 1973. A resident of Stockbridge she was a familar presence at Berkshire arts events. She died this week at 101. Remarkably, she continued to dance into her 90s which became the subject of a short film

A unique asset of Jacob's Pillow is its bucolic setting in the Berkshire woods. This week, on line, you can celebrate both dance and Earth Day. Here is an invitation from executive and artistic director, Pamela Tatge.

For the first time in its 88-year history, the Jacob’s Pillow Board of Trustees and Executive Leadership have made the decision to cancel the 2020 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, previously scheduled for June 24-August 30 along with its annual gala scheduled for June 20.

Berliner Festspiele invited this young company, Gauthier Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, to dance for five exciting days and to great success. For the rest of the year they will travel and perform internationally, including at Jacob's Pillow, in Becket, Massachusetts, the week of July 13. The Pillow invites yearly for their three months long summer festival dance companies from around the world.

The 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.

With 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.

Caleb 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.

Alvin 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.