Jacob’s Pillow opened their 90th Season, after three summers of COVID, a fire, and restoration of the Ted Shawn Theater, with a party, an over-the-top celebration of our diverse America.
The festival began, most fittingly, with a return of Eastern Woodland Dances, honoring the indigenous peoples on whose ancestral land Jacob’s Pillow sits. In the Perles Family Center, Larry Spotted Crow Mann of the Nipmoc tribe and Annawon Weeden, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag, led us through traditional dances from the Northwest and Eastern tribes. The Iroquois dancers, returning to the Pillow, celebrate the family, and especially women and children. In one dance, they invited women in the audience to join the dancers on the floor, creating a large circle of women moving harmoniously together to the rhythm of the dance.
Our hearts were stolen, though, by the children, two boys aged two and seven, who danced with gusto and flair. After one dance, the two-year-old wandered toward the wide-open door at the side of the Perles Family Center, stopped at the threshold, and then toddled into the bright world beyond. Out swooped a tall handsome Iroquois warrior, transformed into a dad, who grabbed his hand and led him in, laughing with the audience.
Acosia Red Elk, an award-winning dancer from the Tribes of the Pacific Northwest, thrilled the audience with The Jingle Dress Dance: a Medicine Dance. Reminding me of the power of tap to, literally and figuratively, deepen and amplify the power of the dance, so too did the music of the jingle dress deepen and amplify the potency of Acosia Red Elk’s dignified movements.
The Eastern Woodlands program ended, and, later in the Ted Shawn Theater, America(na) To Me began, with Gombey Dance. Hailing from Bermuda, the Warwick Gombey troupe dancers are descended from slaves, including Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett peoples captured from this region. With their mix of West Indian, Native American and West African influences, they create a thought-provoking sequé from a meditation on our Indigenous history into a contemplation of what dance in America means to us now.
Curated by Melanie George and Ali Rosa-Salas, America(na) to Me is an all-out joyous rethinking of how we define dance and American identity 90 years after the founding of Jacob’s Pillow. This celebration of dance and identity is expansive and inclusive, inviting us to continue pushing beyond the boxes that restrain us.
One of those boxes is gender. At the beginning of the gorgeous South Indian-inspired dance, Ar/Dha (“Half”), words projected onto the backstage wall told the legend of the god, Shiva, inviting his feminine half, Kali, to a dance competition. When Kali is undefeatable, Shiva drops his earring, then, maintaining his pose, picks up his earring with his toe and raises his leg to his ear, replacing his earring. Because a woman shouldn’t raise her leg, Kali surrenders. The projected legend ends with the question, “Can we re-write this story?”
As the evening progressed, we were challenged by the many ways this question can be asked and how the stories that constrain us can be re-written.
As the curtain closed on Ar/Dha (“Half”), Alex Tatarsky reeled onto the proscenium like a loose-jointed puppet. With baby-doll rouged cheeks and non-stop babble, grabbing body parts while uttering the almost scatological, they regarded the audience with big eyes, seemingly startled at the uncontrolled naughtiness of what just came out of their mouth. Underneath this loopy zaniness, Tatarsky provokes us to contemplate just what is acceptable and what is not. And who decides? Psychiatrists? Supreme Courts?
The cornucopia of delicious performances unfolded with Dime Quien Soy, Nélida Tirado (concept and choreography) and composer Gonzalo Grau’s flamenco and social dance infused meditation on Puerto Rican coming of age, followed by Gershwin Sweet, a tour de force trio of athleticism and gender repartee set to the delicate and swinging pianism of Joshua Katz playing George Gershwin’s Three Piano Preludes and Piano Variations on “I Got Rhythm.”
At the rear of the darkened stage, as the ancient, familiar barn doors partially opened to a blinding light shining painfully into the audience’s eyes, Jasmine Hearn emerged, almost invisible, clad in flowing, filmy garments, small and vulnerable. Like a will-o-the-wisp, she moved through space, in and out of light, like a deep and searching soul.
The evening ended with Unsung Sheros of the 20th Century, a tour-de-force of tap, danced with dynamism and vigor by a quintet of African-American women tap stars, their taps collaborating with world-class musicians channeling music from the greats, including Nina Simone, George Gershwin, Fats Waller, and Count Basie.
And capping it off was the artistic director, Dormeshia, a powerhouse of tap, dancing with a verve and brilliance that propelled the audience out of their seats.
And then, a final thrill as the entire ensemble joined in a riot of rhythm to Duke Ellington and Billie Strayhorn’s iconic Satin Doll.
Bravo, Jacob’s Pillow!
