This past Saturday evening, June 21st, on a summery night in the Berkshires, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival held a gala evening to launch its 2025 season. Executive and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge, during her curtain speech to a packed house, noted also that 3,000 people from 20 countries were live-streaming the gala. She listed extremely impressive numbers for the performances scheduled this summer—about 950 artists, crew and staff will contribute to the 127 performances on three stages.
However, the gala night was ultimately about one person, Pillow Director of Preservation Norton Owen, celebrating 50 years at the Festival. On gala night, Mr. Owen received the entirely deserved Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award for 2025. It would not be hyperbole to state that there are no dancers, choreographers, dance historians, or indeed performers or musicians of any kind working today, or over the past 50 years, who have not been impacted in some way by the work Mr. Owen has done at the Pillow for this past half-century. One only need visit the exhibition “Connecting Through Time: 50 Seasons with Norton Owen,” at Blake’s Barn, beautifully curated by Wendy Perron, to get a sense of the impact Mr. Owen has had on the dance world, and on how we all experience dance and its history.
Quite fittingly, the performances in The Ted Shawn Theatre on gala night reflected that history, showcasing the past, present, and future of dance. New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley performed the iconic “Mourner’s Bench,” choreographed by Talley Beatty in 1947 and performed by Beatty himself at the Pillow that same year. Stanley performed the work beautifully, not attempting to overpower the simplicity of the piece, but essentially just letting the choreography speak for itself. Watching Stanley’s wonderfully sensitive and austere performance made it hard not to get perhaps a bit nostalgic for that seemingly simpler choreographic time.
In a nice piece of symmetry, Mr. Owen, once again demonstrating his impeccable understanding of dance and dance history, was pretty much the one who chose this piece for the gala. Watching “Mourner’s Bench,” one clearly saw the Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham dance world from which Beatty came, as well as some of the future of dance—Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations” for example—to come.
Three pieces, Camille A. Brown’s “Throwback #2 (excerpt from I AM),” David Middendorp’s “Flyland,” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain,” effectively represented the “present” of dance. As usual, Brown assembled an absolutely stellar group of dancers and musicians, many of whom were working with Brown during her company’s dazzling week at Jacob’s Pillow last summer. Simply put, if you get an opportunity to see this company, do it.
Tina Burkett and Guzmán Rosado from the dance company BODYTRAFFIC (another company very much worth seeing, and performing at the Pillow in less than two weeks) performed “Flyland,” a piece involving projections on the dance floor and the back theater wall, as well as cameras filming the dancers as they performed and projecting them on the back wall in real time. The effect was reminiscent of the famous gravity-defying dance Fred Astaire does in the film “Royal Wedding,” but of course that was entirely analog, and this is much more digital.
Wheeldon’s “After the Rain” was performed by New York City Ballet soloists Alexa Maxwell and Alec Knight.
The future of dance was most definitely represented by the students from The School at Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Ballet Performance Ensemble. Lest we forget, in addition to three unique performance spaces, and the world-renowned Archive, the Pillow also has a prestigious school. On Gala Night, the Contemporary Ballet students performed a piece choreographed by School Program Director Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, which they had learned in five days. Judging by the quality of these dancers’ performance, the future is very, very bright, both for these dancers as professionals and for us as the audience members. Most impressive was the dancers’ unison work. The ability of these dancers, after only five days of rehearsal, to stay in tune and fully connected to each other while dancing Lopez Ochoa’s intricate choreography was quite remarkable. They exhibited professional-level skills.
The keynote speaker of the gala was United States Senator Elizabeth Warren, who presented Mr. Owen with the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. Given our perilous times, it was notable, and in a way commendable, that the evening was not more political, although, to this audience member, there was a continuous undercurrent, as there seemingly always is these days. It was heartening when Senator Warren told the audience that Jacob’s Pillow is represented in Washington via a large photograph of dancers taken on the outdoor Henry Leir Stage that hangs in her Senate office—a photograph, of course, chosen for her by Mr. Owen! It was also heartening when Director Tatge mentioned that Senator Warren has cited Jacob’s Pillow as her favorite place in Western Massachusetts—all the more remarkable given that “Western Massachusetts” appears to encompass everything west of Worcester.
The Pillow has had a long and illustrious history, and two former artistic directors, Liz Thompson and Ella Baff, were present on gala night. Ms. Thompson perhaps has been the most transformational of Pillow directors since Ted Shawn held the reins. Thompson, the director from 1980 to 1990, undertook many capital projects, in addition to her extremely innovative programming. She had the original Doris Duke Theatre built, as well as the first outdoor stage at the Pillow. Arguably, she put the Pillow on the course it remains on to this day. Baff, the director from 1998 to 2015, greatly expanded the reach, the holdings and the accessibility of the Pillow Archives (with Mr. Owen’s assistance, one assumes), and was also responsible for many improvements which made the Pillow campus more welcoming for visitors.
Sadly, the original Doris Duke Theatre burned down in 2020. However, under Tatge’s powerhouse leadership and her vision, it has been spectacularly rebuilt, re-opening in early July for performances this summer. It looks to be a performance space for this century and beyond.
During his acceptance speech, Mr. Owen noted that all the hoopla surrounding his 50 years at the Pillow, and his receiving the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, did not mean he was disappearing from the scene. In his words, “I’m not going anywhere!” And, notwithstanding all the cutting of the arts and humanities funding happening in Washington these days, it is abundantly clear from the Gala that neither is the Pillow. I am reminded of a story about Winston Churchill, which may be urban legend (I hope not). During the height of World War II, someone asked him if the arts budget of Britain should be cut so that that money could go to the war effort. He reportedly replied “God, no. What do you think we are fighting for?”
The Pillow, the Pillow Archives, the new Doris Duke Theatre…these are national treasures. You can support and strengthen them by going to Jacob’s Pillow and seeing performances this summer. The Pillow summer performance schedule can be found here
