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<\/a>- The longer you live, the older you get. Hmm. This not-exactly-apocalyptic statement refers (obliquely) to recollection. When I attended Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s 90th Anniversary Gala last week, memories crowded in. Sixty-eight years ago, I made my debut on the Pillow stage in Taken With Tongues: A Study in Fanaticism by Harriette Ann Gray. Crammed into two cars (or was it three?), we dancers and pianist Yale Marshall had driven all the way to the Pillow from the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado to share three programs with Ram Gopal and the American Mime Theatre. Ted Shawn, Jacob\u2019s Pillow founder, introduced us to the audience from the stage. In 1954, air seeped through the cracks in the theater\u2019s walls. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
My memories are fragmented\u2014detailed flashes whose tentacles squirm out in search of anchorage. In charge of writers participating in New Dance Workshops at Connecticut College in the 1980s, I took my gang of fourteen or so to Saratoga Performing Arts and then to Jacob\u2019s Pillow, after which they wrote and critiqued one another\u2019s offerings. Later, some of those workshops took place at the Pillow, and the critics stayed in one of the slightly ramshackle cabins along George Carter Road and swam in Goose Pond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I drove to the Pillow on Saturday, June 18th, 2022, armed with Siri\u2019s directions for a route I once knew well, parked in a small area designated for I forgot whom (press?), took a remembered shortcut, and ended up in the gigantic tent that was sitting on the Great Lawn, with a glass of wine in my hand, looking for Table 6 and choreographer-dancer Wendy Perron, who\u2019d be coming home with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whom did I talk to, whose name did I forget? I was delighted to run across my friend Norton Owen Director of Preservation. (at https:\/\/danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org learn more). There were people I knew, people I had forgotten I knew, people I was happy to know, and people ready to take charge of me. Projected films and slides chronicled the site\u2019s history, background and familiar faces of those who\u2019d inhabited it (Michelle Dorrance, Trisha Brown, Nikolai Hubbe, et al). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>The School at Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Ballet Performance Ensemble performs “Leaves of Hope,” choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, at the 90th Anniversary Gala. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The program in the Ted Shawn Theatre began with references to both the Pillow\u2019s school and to its history. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa\u2019s world premiere featured the site\u2019s Contemporary Ballet. In only four days, Lopez Ochoa had expertly manipulated twenty-two Pillow students and former students (men and women) into pleasing patterns. And after Pamela Tatge, the Pillow\u2019s Executive and Artistic Director, and Christopher Jones, chair of its Board of Trustees, had welcomed us, we watched Adam Weinert\u2019s restaging of Shawn\u2019s 1938 Dance of the Ages<\/em>for himself and nine performers (almost all male), beginning as immobile uncovered shapes. Brought to life, they dance to music by Jess Meeker, who accompanied classes at the Pillow for many years. In those earlier days, the men were more roughly hewn; they sent a firm message: dancing is not for sissies. No need for that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>Sara Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III perform Pas de Deux Excerpt from Justin Peck’s “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes.” Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n And then we saw (oh joy!) Sara Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III dancing four duets from Justin Peck\u2019s 2015 Rodeo<\/em>, set to the ravishingly tender \u201cSaturday Night Waltz\u201d from Aaron Copeland\u2019s score for the original work. Premiered by American Ballet Theater in 1942, its choreographer, Agnes de Mille, danced the role of a girl who wanted to be one of the guys. (It was performed many years ago at Jacob\u2019s Pillow, its music played by two pianists and conducted by Leonard Bernstein). As I wrote admiringly of Mearns recently, \u201cshe doesn\u2019t play to the audience and seems always to have some sort of story running in her head.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson of Kinetic Light perform in “There, Found., Here.” Photo by Cherylynn Tsuchima.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There, Found, Here<\/em> is another kind of celebration. The duet (by Alice Sheppard in collaboration with Laurel Lawson) from Kinetic Light\u2019s Wired <\/em>offers a question about virtuosity and how the word \u201cdancer\u201d can be defined. The program also credits a Flight Director (Catherine Nelson) and an Automation Operator (Yoni Kallai). The special wheelchairs in which the two powerful performers sit can fly, rotate, rise, fall, separate, and come together. And, oh lord, how the women do all those things\u2014creating images of friendship, of trust, of strength!<\/p>\n\n\n\n