Stretching out: Jacob’s Pillow provides adventure, sophistication

I’ve told colleagues more than once that the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket is where I go every summer for my annual checkup as a dance critic. I suppose that makes the festival’s executive director, Ella Baff, sort of my choreographic primary-care physician.

The analogy isn’t so far-fetched. Baff remains the most adventurous and sophisticated presenter of dance in Massachusetts, and I’ve admired her determination to give dance fans what they need to see, not just what they want to see. She accomplishes this without making performances feel like an excruciating therapeutic regimen, which is commendable. A trip to the Pillow is always a joy.

Earlier this week, Baff announced the schedule for the 2003 festival, which runs from June 18 to Aug. 24. A press release stressed, “During these times, an international viewpoint is more important than ever.”

Frugal fans can rest easy at the Pillow

If you feel the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket is aimed only at the white-belt-and-matching-loafers crowd, think again. Though the festival does attract a mixed audience, it remains the best place in Massachusetts to see what’s hot and what’s spanking brand-new in the dance world - and a good deal of it is either low-priced or free.

Hipsters will appreciate, for example, the U.S. premiere of Compagnie Felix Ruckert’s “Deluxe Joy Pilot,” featured at the Pillow’s spacious Doris Duke Studio Theatre from Aug. 21-24. A live DJ provides a provocative mix of techno underground music for the show, and audience members can choose where they want to sit: in plastic inflatable club chairs, on a number of beds placed center stage, or elsewhere around the house. Interaction with the dancers during the performance is encouraged, so who knows how it all will actually unfold?

Ruckert, a former dancer with Pina Bausch’s groundbreaking Tantztheater Wuppertal, is one of Berlin’s most important rising choreographers. You’re not going to have a chance to see him in Boston anytime soon, and tickets are only $20.

There are plenty more shows in the Duke Theatre worth investigating this summer.

Celebrating the Unity of Nature and Art, in This Case Dance

JENNIFER DUNNING
NY Times

The Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires was for decades an odd but entrancing mix of the giddy and the visionary. <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/04/arts/dance/04PILL.html target=_blank>more</a>

The Body Speaks

Deborah Jowitt
Village Voice

At Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts, the first dance institution to be designated a landmark, artists work and people come to watch process and product from late June to late August, though the bustling place has its share of ghosts. <a href=http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0328/jowitt.php target=_blank>more</a>

A high pointe for Pillow

Nacho Duato’s Compania Nacional de Danza 2 and Buglisi/Foreman Dance at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Saturday.

The legacy of the modern tradition as it continues to unfold in Europe and America was the featured theme this past weekend at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket. Three different shows proved how astonishing it is to observe the artistic seeds, planted decades ago by master choreographers such as Jiri Kylian and Martha Graham, blooming in the present with such passion and precision.

Batoto Yetu helps city kids step into traditional dances

BECKET -- When choreographer Julio Leitao fled war-torn Angola nearly three decades ago, he made the long, painful walk with no shoes and only a handful of extra clothes wrapped inside a blanket. But what he carried in his heart and mind were the songs, dances, and stories of his African childhood.

With his Harlem-based children's dance company, Batoto Yetu, Leitao has brought those cultural traditions to more than 1,500 children over the past 13 years, offering free dance, music, and academic instruction. These inner-city kids get not only a grounding in the traditional culture of their forebears, but a sense of pride, accomplishment, self-esteem, and disclipine that Leitao believes will carry throughout their lives.

'Twist' of fate influences NYC's Petronio
By Theodore Bale
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          Anyone who saw Petronio’s stunning “Strange Attractors” last year at the Emerson Majestic Theatre will be pleased to know his company returns to Massachusetts Wednesday for a five-day run at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket. The intriguing program includes the second section of “Strange Attractors,” the world premiere of excerpts from Petronio’s newest dance, “Island of Misfit Toys,” and a series of intimate portraits he calls “City of Twist.” Petronio also will perform his critically acclaimed solo “Broken Man.”
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( Stephen Petronio Company at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, Wednesday though Aug. 17. Tickets: $35-$40. Call 413-243-0745 or go to www.jacobspillow.org. )

Choreographer offers 'love letter' to New York

BECKET -- A woman sleeps. A crescent moon glows in a star-studded sky. And a man, vulnerable in only his underwear, dances in utter solitude. It reminds us that no matter how connected we may be, we are also quite alone.

The solo, exquisitely danced by Gerald Casel, is one of the vivid choreographic portraits that make up Stephen Petronio's "City of Twist," which the creator calls "a kind of love letter" to New York City. Set to an elegant score (strings, keyboard, guitar, and electronics) by performance artist Laurie Anderson and beautifully lit by Ken Tabachnick, the work was created partly in response to Sept. 11 and gives the innovative Petronio's virtuosic movement a rare emotional context.

Pillow performance shows why Petronio is ‘Man’ of the hour

‘Stephen Petronio is a darling man,’ said Trisha Brown on Saturday afternoon at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. ‘He has four snakes for appendages maybe five,’ she added, inciting laughter from the audience.

A seminal figure in contemporary dance, Brown spoke about her illustrious career for about an hour with dance critic Deborah Jowitt. Naturally the topic turned to Petronio, who danced for seven years with Brown before founding his own troupe nearly twenty years ago. Read on...