CriticalDance Forum

Set amidst the rolling green hills and forests of the Berkshires, Jacob's Pillow has evolved into one of the world's foremost venues for high-caliber dance. Its calling card is not just quality, but diversity. Under the artistic directorship of Ella Baff, the festival has become international in scope, ....

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The 45-year-old legend [Leslie Browne] will make her Pillow debut tomorrow night in Becket, but not as a performer. Rather, she’ll premiere her newest choreography, “Brahms Trio.”

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival opened last week in the Berkshires with the Brazilian company Grupo Corpo. This popular 22-member ensemble were making their fourth visit to the Pillow, and never having seen them before, I was curious to see what makes them hot. I’m not sure I know yet.

hat a thrill to see a large group dance for men in which virility is expressed as much through tenderness and grace as through power and brute strength. Lar Lubovitch’s “Men’s Stories” (2000), being presented at Jacob’s Pillow this week in one of his 36-year-old company’s rare engagements outside New York City, features nine exquisite male dancers in a compelling 50-minute piece that celebrates both masculine solidarity and individuality.

What Price Youth?

By DEBORAH JOWITT
The Village Voice
July 20, 2004

Jacob's Pillow is a summer garden of dance.

People listen to talks on balconies and porches, visit exhibits in a barn, peer at classes, picnic or dine in the tent restaurant, and watch the sunset unfold beyond the dancers' heads at the free "Inside Out" events. And, of course, they see each week's performances on the proscenium stage or in the rustic, high-ceilinged studio theater.

Both pieces shown by the New Danish Dance Theater July 8 through 11, in its American debut at Jacob’s Pillow, relied on verbal and jazz scores from the Beat Generation of the 1950s and pre-postmodern ‘60s

.... Batsheva Dance Company is performing [Naharin’s “Deca Dance] at Jacob’s Pillow starting Wednesday. The occasion, which promises to be a highlight of the summer dance season, marks the seminal Israeli modern dance company’s first area visit in almost 10 years.

Virtuosity Of Canadian Dancers

By TONY ANGARANO
The Hartford Courant
July 23, 2004

Nacho Duato, Mats Ek and Jiri Kylián head the A-list of Europe's contemporary choreographers; their controversial, technically demanding works have become major additions to the international repertory. Yet each creates a distinctly different performance style. Under the artistic direction of Gradimir Pankov, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal revealed extraordinary versatility and virtuosity by presenting pieces by all three modern masters at Jacob's Pillow this week.

Both pieces ... relied on verbal and jazz scores from the Beat Generation of the 1950s and pre-postmodern ‘60s. When you listen for a couple of hours to the long-gone voices of that era intoning their notion of liberated lit, you realize what a huge change the intervening half-century has wrought in our culture.

For choreographer Ohad Naharin, disassembling and reconstructing dances is like creating a puzzle that allows him to see his movement in a new way. In “Deca Dance,” which Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company presented Wednesday night at Jacob’s Pillow -- their first visit in almost a decade -- Naharin mined 10 years’ worth of dances to reassemble a kind of teaser of excerpts.

At Jacob's Pillow, a Global Vision Includes the Audience

By JACK ANDERSON
The New York Times
August 3, 2004

Programs here this past weekend featured the Batsheva Dance Company, an Israeli company that has often performed in the United States, and the Jacob's Pillow debut of a San Francisco troupe with "kin" in its name.

....in 1995, [Neil Ieremia] founded his own troupe, Black Grace. He built a solid reputation that brought the company to Australia to perform to rave reviews, and he took his dancers to their European debut at the Holland Dance Festival last fall. ....the company makes its American debut [at Jacob's Pillow] tonight.

New Zealand Company /Black Grace/ Breaks Out and Soars

By JENNIFER DUNNING
The New York Times
August 16, 2004

One of the most interesting aspects of the wide-ranging program was the extraordinarily close relationship the dancers established almost immediately with the audience, ... And Mr. Ieremia is also an unassuming original whose style suggests a delight in creation that is also evident in the performing.

There are no sacrificial virgins in Shen Wei’s “The Rite of Spring,”..... In fact, unlike the case in numerous dance versions of the landmark Stravinsky score, there is no storyline at all.

Instead, Shen’s strikingly kinetic interpretation is a vivid fusion of East and West, of Chinese opera and modern dance informed by the keen eye of a painter.

.... Sean Curran’s hip company is based in Manhattan, but his childhood roots as an Irish step dancer in Boston continue to inform his contemporary choreography.
Curran will meet audiences from both cities halfway starting Thursday, when he premieres solo and ensemble works at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket.