Memories - Jacob's Pillow and Ted Shawn - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, July, 2002

Betty Jones

Jacob's Pillow was a place of Eden. Mother Derby, who owned a property next to Eden, seduced the students with goodies like raspberries, cream, and brown sugar. Her curiosity about Shawn's idiosyncrasies was fed by our gossip and complaints and supplied her with the soap opera she craved. One summer around 1943, there was a blueberry-picking contest; Mother Derby led me to one of her richest pastures, listed in Shawn's rulebook as forbidden territory. My winning first prize earned me Shawn's favorite book, The Dithyramb of the Rose. The summer was auspicious indeed: I met Jose Limon!

Betty Jones was a principal dancer with the Jose Limon Dance Company for twenty-three years, and now directs and performs with Dances We Dance in Hawaii.

Adam Miller

Two Weeks into the Pillow's Russian American Ballet Project, in which students from both countries learned repertoire by Massine, Tudor, and the young American Amanda Miller, the 1991 failed, bloodless coup that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union came to pass. The Russians were anxious, taut, and disbelieving. Scheduled to leave for Moscow in days, the whole group voted not to cancel our trip. Once in Russia, we were a happy yet uneasy band, comrades in the truest sense.

A principal dancer with Hartford Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Adam Miller is a teacher, choreographer, and associate artistic director of Dance Connecticut.

Annie-B. Parson

Our first summer at Jacobs Pillow, in 2000, was like entering the mouth of a river. Magically and organically, relationships with staff and other artists were forged. One afternoon, archivist Norton Owen pulled from a pine box a very old and very hairy Japanese headdress used by Ted Shawn. Soon we were looking at footage of dances filmed by Shawn in Japan in the 1920s. The thread continues, as my newest work is a rethinking of these dances culled from Norton's gift, our Japanese-based piece Shunkin.

Annie-B Parson is artistic director of Big Dance Theater.