Jacob's pillow at 70

Dance Magazine, July, 2002 by Joseph Carman

IN 1930, MODERN DANCE PIONEER TED SHAWN BOUGHT AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY farm at the end of a zigzag road in Massachusetts. The puritanical New Englanders called the route "Jacob's Ladder," after the prophet's dream of angels ascending to and descending from heaven. Next to Shawn's saltbox farmhouse lay an odd-shaped boulder, dubbed "Jacob's Pillow" by the neighboring farmers, alluding to the biblical rock upon which Jacob laid his head to dream of a return to the promised land. [] Celebrating its seventieth season this year, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival began as a summer showcase for Shawn and his all-male dance company. The festival has blossomed into a sophisticated three-month venue that manages to retain the inimitably bucolic spirit of the site as it accomplishes several functions. Ella Barf, who has served as the Pillow's executive director since 1998, says, "It's an artist's colony, it's a professional school, it's a festival. It has a sense of place, it has the archives, and it all exists in a beautiful physical environment."

Jacob's Pillow represents American ingenuity at its best. Every form of dance from jazz to classical ballet to modern and world dance is represented here, a montage of styles that is thoroughly American in spirit.

Shawn and Ruth St. Denis honored "ethnic dance" by incorporating into their dances a flavor of Japanese here, a smidgen of Spanish there. Shawn always invited dancers from other cultures to perform and teach. In recent years they have hailed from countries such as Russia, Cambodia, Brazil, Israel, Ireland, France, Japan, and Burkina Faso. The multicultural flavor at the Pillow extends to all aspects of the festival: the students, the faculty, the artists, and the performances.

But above all, the Pillow is American in its gregarious way of reaching out to the public, encouraging audiences to be more receptive and challenging them to be more alert. "In whatever way the Pillow can, we want to stimulate public appetite for dance as a subject, because there are so many different kinds and traditions," said Baff.

It was that brand of stimulation that prompted Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers to give public "Tea Lecture Demonstrations" in July of 1933. The first audience consisted of forty-five ladies in gloves and hats, to whom handsome male dancers in bathrobes served tea and little sandwiches. Then Shawn would lecture and all the men would dance. By the end of that summer, people were being turned away from sold-out houses.

Shawn used the farmhouse and two adjoining barns as a summer residence for his company until 1939. In the spring of 1940, Mary Washington Ball, a dance teacher at the State Normal School in Cortland, New York, leased the farm to conduct the Berkshire Hills Dance Festival. So began the tradition of eclectic programming that continues at the Pillow today. The following summer, Ballet Russe stars Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin rented Jacob's Pillow to run the International Dance Festival and School. That festival was financially so successful that local supporters formed a committee, raised $50,000 to buy the property, and built a theater that employed Shawn as director. This entity, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Inc., still owns the land.

ON JULY 9, 1942, THE TED SHAWN THEATRE, DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY for dance, opened its doors. The architect was Joseph Franz, who had designed the Music Shed at the Tanglewood music festival fifteen miles away. Shawn directed the Pillow--and continued giving pre-performance talks--until his death in 1972 at the age of 81. A succession of directors followed, including Norman Walker, who upgraded the festival's educational programs in the 1970s, and Liz Thompson, who sought out new choreographic voices, developed plans for the Studio/Theater, and reached out to a wider audience in the 1980s. Sam Miller continued expanding it in the early 1990s, and Sali Ann Kriegsman stabilized the financial situation in the later 1990s.

When Baff took the position of executive director four years ago, she wanted to uphold what she calls "the sweat equity" that has gone into the Pillow's distinguished legacy. "The Pillow has tremendous equilibrium and perspective because of its history," she said. "But it is as risk-taking as ever in terms of what it presents and what it tries to accomplish."

The 2002 season represents the quality of programs for which the Pillow is known. Highlights include the White Oak Dance Project with a new solo for Mikhail Baryshnikov choreographed by Lucinda Childs, the Lyon Opera Ballet performing Meryl Tankard's mesmerizing Bolero, and Urban Bush Women in collaboration with members of the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique in Shadow's Child. Francesca Harper, fresh from her stint in Fosse, creates a solo multimedia piece with turntable wizard DJ Spooky. Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, MOMIX, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Wally Cardona, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will also appear. Choreographer David Gordon has incorporated old letters between Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis into a work called The Private Lives of Dancers.