Jacob’s Pillow founder Ted Shawn was a ground-breaking visionary when it came to the role of men in dance. After purchasing the Jacob’s Pillow farm in Becket in 1931, and converting a barn into a studio, Shawn recruited eight men, all athletes from Springfield College (where Shawn taught), for a new men’s dance company. Thereafter, in the studio, he started presenting performances of the Men Dancers that he called “Tea Lecture Demonstrations.” By the time Shawn disbanded the men’s company in 1940, the Men Dancers had danced for over a million people in the United States, Canada, Cuba, and England, and Shawn had not only forever changed dance, but he had transformed the landscape for men dancers all over the world.
This year marks the debut of the Jacob’s Pillow Men Dancers Award, generously established and underwritten by Brian Fitzpatrick and his husband Fernando Cortes. The biennial award of $25,000 is given to a choreographer of any gender who creates an innovative work danced by men dancers and performed at Jacob’s Pillow. And it seems fitting that the very first Men Dancers Award was just presented to Roderick George, whose company kNoname Artist performed his work for men dancers, entitled “Venom,” last Thursday evening on the Henry J. Leir Stage. Fitting because, like Shawn, George is also a pioneer, advocating for visibility, expression, and representation for those in the Black and LGBTQ+ communities by using art, as George says, “as a form of protest and a healing method to find agency.”
George has had a distinguished career as a professional dancer, and also as a choreographer. Thus, his works “Venom” and “The Missing Fruit-Part 1,” which were both performed by kNoname Artist at the Pillow, exhibited a substantial level of artistic maturity.
“Venom” is a very intriguing work for seven men, including George himself. It opens slowly and deliberately, unfolding and building momentum, to Diana Ross’s cover of Tammy Terrell and Marvin Gaye’s iconic hit “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” It seems like George wants to deliberately juxtapose the strength and energy of the men’s dancing against the tenderness of the music, although, in both the music and the men’s movement, there is a strong undercurrent of tension and power that eventually and dramatically surfaces. As the piece builds, the athleticism of the men dancers emerges (Shawn would be very pleased, one assumes), and there is a beautiful trio for Tyeri Morrison, Jordan Lang, and Nat Wilson, in addition to strong unison sections.
The work features the striking music of slowdanger, with an occasional evocative and poignant narration of someone’s personal experience, or commentary, mixed in. But George and slowdanger—very smartly in this viewer’s opinion—do not allow the spoken word to overtake the piece; the words just potently add to the work.
“The Missing Fruit — Part 1,” which also featured the excellent music of slowdanger, was a piece for the seven men dancers from “Venom,” with the addition of four women. The ensemble work in the piece was extremely strong, and the dancers were really cooking in the tightly grouped unison sections. In addition to developing visually and viscerally interesting movement which evolved naturally, George has a solid feel for exactly how long to remain within or repeat a movement figure before moving on. The movement had a bit of a capoeira feel to it too, which was interesting and unusual.
The program notes that both pieces had been adapted for the outdoor Leir Stage. To this viewer, the outdoor stage perhaps diffused both pieces a bit. Arguably these works, particularly with the sonic wall of sound feel of the music, will be better served, and all the more powerful, in a space where one’s senses can get focused and then essentially assaulted. That is very difficult to do in a wide-open outdoor space. Nonetheless, the outdoor space did capture some uniquely beautiful moments, such as, towards the end of “The Missing Fruit — Part 1,” when the dancers had their arms stretched overhead, and their open hands, with fingers spread wide, were silhouetted against the grey evening sky.
The Pillow, in presenting Roderick George and kNoname Artist, continues to be a critical conduit on the dance continuum: recognition to Ted Shawn from the past, with the establishment of the Jacob’s Pillow Men Dancers Award; and a look to the future with that Men Dancers Award going to Roderick George, hopefully a strong trailblazer for dancers going forward, just as Shawn was.
