Dave Read

2015 Jacob’s Pillow schedule

April 1, 2015 Article by Dave Read

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
358 George Carter Road
Becket, MA 01223
Phone: 413.243.9919
Fax:413.243.4744
Web: jacobspillow.org

Jacob’s Pillow 2015 schedule is highlighted by Martha Graham Dance Company’s 90th Anniversary, including a world premiere by eminent choreographer Mats Ek; a pre-Festival dance and radio stage production hosted by Ira Glass; the return of Nederlands Dans Theater 2; the U.S. debut of the German groupGauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart; the world premiere of American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Daniil Simkin’s INTENSIO; Cuban contemporary ensemble Malpaso Dance Company, performing with pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Tickets went on sale April 1.

Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host – June 13 and 14, Ted Shawn Theatre

The venerable Ira Glass, host of public radio’s This American Life, hosts this new stage production which will appear at Jacob’s Pillow for two special pre-Festival performances. Glass is joined by dancers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass of contemporary dance ensemble Monica Bill Barnes & Company in an evening of dance and storytelling.

Season Opening Gala – June 20, Ted Shawn Theatre

The exclusive Gala performance will include American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Daniil Simkin, New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns and soloist Russell Janzen, the legendary Martha Graham Dance Company, and the dancers of The School at Jacob’s Pillow Ballet Program in a world premiere by BalletX co-founder and co-Artistic Director Matthew Neenan.

Ballet BC – June 24-28, Ted Shawn Theatre

From Vancouver, Canada, Artistic Director Emily Molnar and the dynamic dancers of Ballet BC work with top contemporary choreographers from across the globe. They open the Festival with William Forsythe’s intricate Work Within Work; Cayetano Soto’s Twenty Eight Thousand Waves with music by David Lang and Bryce Dessner; and the U.S. premiere of Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s interpretation of The Rite of Spring, score by Igor Stravinsky.

New York Theatre Ballet in Cinderella – June 24-28, Doris Duke Theatre

New York Theatre Ballet opens the Doris Duke Theatre season with Donald Mahler’s popular version of the classic story ballet, Cinderella. Cinderella is a treat for all ages, with skilled dancers, beloved Sergei Prokofiev music, and imaginative costumes and sets. $10 youth tickets are available for every family-friendly performance.

Dorrance Dance, Toshi Reagon, BIGlovely in The Blues Project – July 1-5, Ted Shawn Theatre

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award winner Michelle Dorrance and Dorrance Dance return with The Blues Project, which premiered here in 2013. The Blues Project cast includes co-choreographers and soloists Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and the production features music composed by renowned singer-songwriter Toshi Reagon, performed live by Reagon and her band BIGLovely.

BODYTRAFFIC – July 1-5, Doris Duke Theatre

Based in Los Angeles, BODYTRAFFIC was founded in 2007 by dancers and co-directors Lillian Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett. Program features Dust by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter; Once again, before you go by Victor Quijada of RUBBERBANDance Group; and The New 45, a jazzy duet by Richard Siegal.

Nederlands Dans Theater 2 – July 8-12, Ted Shawn Theatre

NDT2, second company of Nederlands Dans Theater, presents a program with Sara by Sharon Eyal and Dai Behar of Israel, and Schubert and Shutters Shut by Spanish-British choreographic duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot. Plus I New Then by Swedish dancemaker Johan Inger, danced to songs by Van Morrison.

Big Dance Theater in Alan Smithee Directed This Play: Triple Feature – July 8-12, Doris Duke Theatre

In 2007, Big Dance Theater co-directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar were the inaugural recipients of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, given to visionary dancemakers. In their latest work Alan Smithee Directed This Play: Triple Feature the company samples films and novels including Doctor Zhivago, the film Terms of Endearment, and the 1970 French thriller Le Cercle Rouge.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet – July 15-19, Ted Shawn Theatre

Artistic Director Alonzo King presents a program with King’s Concerto for Two Violins, Men’s Quintet, and the East Coast premiere of a collaboration with natural soundscape artist Dr. Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra, and composer Richard Blackford.

Sébastien Ramirez and Honji Wang in Monchichi – July 15-19, Doris Duke Theatre

Sébastien Ramirez is a French dancer of Spanish origin who started out as a virtuosic b-boy. Honji Wang is a German dancer of Korean descent, with a rich background in ballet, contemporary, and urban dance styles. The duo questions interculturality within a couple in Monchichi, a show that combines hip-hop, contemporary dance, and unique set design.

Daniil Simkin’s INTENSIO – July 22-26, Ted Shawn Theatre

American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Daniil Simkin is joined by fellow dancers of ABT Isabella Boylston, Alexandre Hammoudi, Blaine Hoven, Hee Seo, Calvin Royal III, and James Whiteside, plus special guest Céline Cassone of Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. In INTENSIO, a Jacob’s Pillow co-commission, they perform four world premieres by choreographers: Nederlands Dans Theater 2 associate choreographer Alexander Ekman of Sweden, American dancemaker Gregory Dolbashian, resident Boston Ballet choreographer Jorma Elo of Finland, and Colombo-Belgian artist Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.

Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart – July 22-26, Doris Duke Theatre

Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart presents a program including PACOPEPEPLUTO by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, Alexander Ekman’s Two Become Three, the solo Ballet 101 by Artistic Director Eric Gauthier, and other dances.

Daniel Ulbricht & Stars of American Ballet – July 29-August 2, Ted Shawn Theatre

New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht and soloists from New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Houston Ballet present a program that includes In the Night by Jerome Robbins, Distractions by New York City Ballet’s Justin Peck, and Les Lutins by Johan Kobborg.

Jessica Lang Dance in The Wanderer – July 29 – August 9, Doris Duke Theatre

Jessica Lang returns for a two-week run of a new evening-length ballet, The Wanderer, which was created in part during a Creative Development Residency at the Pillow. The ballet is set to Franz Schubert’s famous song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, which will be performed live at the Festival. Set designed by Mimi Lien, costumes by fashion designer and former Mark Morris Dance Group company member Bradon McDonald, and lighting by Nicole Pearce.

Malpaso Dance Company with Arturo O’Farrill and Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble – August 5-9, Ted Shawn Theatre

Despedida, choreographed by Artistic Director Osnel Delgado, is a new work for ten dancers with an original score composed by pianist/composer Arturo O’Farrill and performed by O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble, the resident ensemble of the nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance. Despedida takes inspiration from the eponymous poem by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The second work on the program, co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow and The Joyce Theater, will be created by ever-popular contemporary ballet choreographer Trey McIntyre, whose dance ensemble Trey McIntyre Project gave its final performances at the Pillow last season.

The Sarasota Ballet – August 12-16, Ted Shawn Theatre

The Sarasota Ballet, directed by Iain Webb, performs Sir Frederick Ashton’s iconic, artful trios Monotones I and Monotones II, Christopher Wheeldon’s The American set to the Dvoák music of the same name, and a world premiere by Brazilian resident choreographer and company member Ricardo Graziano.

La Otra Orilla – August 12-16, Doris Duke Theatre

From Montréal, Canada, La Otra Orilla embodies a deep mastery of traditional flamenco dance and the music of Andalusia, married with a contemporary twist. Myriam Allard, soul-stirring vocalist Hedi Graja, and a cast of vocalists, guitarists, and percussionists present a world premiere full of flamenco and contemporary dance, multimedia and video effects, and live music.

L.A. Dance Project – August 19-22, Ted Shawn Theatre

In their Pillow debut, L.A. Dance Project, founded by Benjamin Millepied, perform Murder Ballades by New York City Ballet’s Justin Peck, Millepied’s new ballet Hearts and Arrows, and the U.S. premiere of Roy Assaf’s II Acts for the Blind.

Liz Gerring Dance Company in glacier – August 19-23, Doris Duke Theatre

Liz Gerring’s contemporary dance, glacier, is a 65-minute work features set design by Robert Wierzel and is danced to an original score by company resident composer Michael J. Schumacher, whose piece “Glacier” originated during a summer stay near Colorado’s Glacier Lake.

Martha Graham Dance Company – August 26-30, Ted Shawn Theatre

Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins and the Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham's "Appalachian Spring" Courtesy of the Library of Congress — Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins and the Martha Graham Dance Company
in Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring”
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The legendary modern dance company launches its 90th Anniversary, celebrating a pioneering past and trail-blazing future. This spectacular program includes Martha Graham’s dramatic classic work Embattled Garden, Echo by choreographer Andonis Foniadakis, Depak Ine by Nacho Duato, and the world premiere of AXE, by Mats Ek.

MADBOOTS DANCE – August 26-30, Doris Duke Theatre

MADBOOTS DANCE was founded in 2011 by Austin Diaz and Jonathan Campbell. Their program will include work created during a February Creative Development Residency at Jacob’s Pillow.

Further programming announcements will be made in April for more than 200 free events, including Inside/Out performances, PillowTalks, and exclusive exhibits.

Jacob’s Pillow map and directions

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Annual exhibits in four venues throughout the Pillow’s National Historic Landmark grounds display photographs, video, artifacts and other engaging visual material that enrich the visitor’s experience of dance. The Archives, documenting dance and Pillow history from 1894 to the present, welcome both the general public and artistic and scholarly researchers to view videos of recent performances or historic films from years past, and browse dance or related art and history books. The full resources of the Archives are available to the public free of charge on a drop-in basis Tuesdays through Sundays, from noon until final curtain.

PillowTalks are brief Pre-Show Talks which introduce audiences to the performance they are about to attend, and Post-Show Talks with the artists just after they step offstage. All talks are free and open to the public. PillowTalks take place in Blake’s Barn, Thursdays at 5pm and Saturdays at 4pm, providing varied opportunities to gain insight from dancers, choreographers, musicians, filmmakers, visual designers, historians, and other experts.

Free guided tours of the 163-acre Jacob’s Pillow campus leave from the Welcome Center every Friday and Saturday at 5:30pm, and patrons can pick up a self-guided tour map anytime to explore the grounds on their own. Patrons are also welcome to visit The School at Jacob’s Pillow and observe renowned artist faculty working with emerging professional dancers, either on a drop-in basis or pre-arranged for groups larger than four.

Jacob’s Pillow offers many dining options including the Pillow Café, a full-service open air restaurant on The Great Lawn; the Pillow Pub, offering casual fare, ready-to-go picnics, and a full bar; and the Coffee & Ice Cream Bars. Many visitors bring a picnic lunch or dinner from home and dine on The Great Lawn or while taking in a performance on the Inside/Out stage.

Watching Andris Nelsons conduct

Dec. 6, 2014 Article by Dave Read

Reading the New Yorker is always an entertaining and edifying activity, and sometimes more, such as when I got a rush of sympatico from an article by Alex Ross in the Dec. 1, 2014 issue, Brushfires; Andris Nelsons energizes the Boston Symphony. The caption of the accompanying illustration reads, “On the podium, Nelsons, a galvanic young Latvian, lunges about uninhibitedly.” It remined me of my effort to describe Maestro Nelsons during his first Tanglewood concert since being named BSO Music director, the July 11, 2014 program featuring Anne-Sophie Mutter performing Dvorak’s Violin Concerto.
“There was a moment toward the end of the Violin concerto, with Ms. Muter at rest, when he almost stepped off the podium, crouching and reaching toward the violins to draw forth a soft passage. He left footprints and handprints all over the podium, like an animal marking territory.”

lexicon of the music critic

Being totally unschooled in the lexicon of the music critic, I’m pretty much left to write about the appearance of a concert, leaving the cognoscenti to describe how the music sounds in relation to how they think it should sound. Orchestras such as the Boston Symphony project a uniform, practically static image, which makes it easy for the conductor to be the focus of my attention, as he (and sometimes she) articulates his musical directives by way of gestures. And this gesticulation can range from eloquent to akward, from geriatric to gymnastic, from martial to manic.

In his New Yorker article, Ross says that “… Nelsons lunges about uninhibitedly, violating textbook rules about the wisdom of minimizing one’s gestures. I imagine that Boston players have already mastered imitations of his signature moves: the Backward Lean, the Extreme Crouch, the Trapeze Grab, the Across-the-Table Ice-Cream Scoop.”

So it is good to know that a respected music critic deems a conductor’s gesticulations worthy of more than a passing mention, and that the lexicon needn’t be staid. It feels like getting permission to be playful even while writing about highbrow stuff! Thanks to Alex Ross, I’ll take a stab at adding to the lexicon when Nelsons returns to Tanglewood next July.

[bctt tweet=”Watching Andris Nelsons conduct.”]

Beethoven Symphony 9 at Tanglewood

Article by Dave Read

The August 24 performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was the final item on the 2014 schedule of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s season at Tanglewood, as it almost always is. It is such an immense work of art that to call it a fitting way to close the season is silly. Each eight week season of music by the BSO and their guests here in the Berkshires generates its own themes and patterns, hits and misses. Beethoven’s Ninth fits regardless where it gets scheduled.

Esteemed Maestro Charles Dutoit conducted today, eliciting a performance that was both ethereal and thrilling. And as they’ve done before, the amateurs of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus attained the same heights of perfection as their professional colleagues of the BSO.

We didn’t time the performance, but would guess that it was longish; it certainly wasn’t hurried, and we did slip into reverie in the first movement, which seems to invite the mind to detach, after establishing the basic theme, which ignites a long slow fuse of anticipation for its fulfillment an hour hence.

There was a vast audience today, occupying areas of Lawn that had been vacant since James Taylor’s concerts on July 3 & 4.

The Mount Edith Wharton Restoration

Article by Dave Read

The Mount, view from Edith Wharton's walled garden; photo by David Dashiell

Edith Wharton (and husband Edward “Teddy”) built the Mount and surrounding gardens, comprising an estate of some 150 acres in Lenox, Mass. in 1902, and lived there until 1911, when she moved to Paris. She was honored by France for her charitable work during WWl, returned to the US only once after the war, and was buried in the American cemetery at Versailles in 1937. Edith Wharton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, for The Age of Innocence, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer.

Edith Wharton Restoration, a.k.a The Mount, was founded by in 1980 by Shakespeare and Co., the theatre group that set up shop there in 1978, after the property had been left vacant years earlier by the Foxhollow School. In 2001, Shakespeare and Co. moved from the Mount and in recent years, the Edith Wharton Restoration has been plagued by financial problems, which led to the resignation of its president under the threat of foreclosure in 2008 when it defaulted on repayment of a $4.3 million loan. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave it a grant that helped re-structure the debt. Edith Wharton Restoration has won several preservation awards, including from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Mount contact info.

2 Plunkett Street- Box 974-Lenox, MA 01240-0974;
Open daily May 1 – October 31 – 10am to 5pm;
Admission: $16 adults; $13 college students; 18 – under free;
Phone: (413) 551-5111 –
Web: edithwharton.org

Driving directions to The Mount

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Wizard of Oz with Boston Pops at Tanglewood

Article by Dave Read

Billed as Oz with Orchestra, the Tanglewood presentation of a newly restored print of The Wizard of Oz, vocals and dialogue intact and paired with the Boston Pops’ performance of the original orchestration, made for a thoroughly entertaining experience. Way more than a mere nostalgia kick, it commanded your attention, leaving no room for daydreaming. Reflections on childhood viewings had to be postponed until afterwards, when an especially animated and chatty crowd strolled back to the parking lots around 11 PM.

Like many in the audience tonight, my experience with The Wizard of Oz dates back to the days of black and white television and the annual broadcasts from 1956 onward. I dug this movie from the get-go, even as an under-age iconoclast disapproving anything my sisters liked. And tonight I responded with the unbridled joy of an over-aged optimist!

Conductor Keith Lockart’s established versatility was on full display as he used a pair of digital devices to lead the Boston Pops in their supporting role. It was a seamless collaboration between the orchestra and the movie projected on a large screen overhead. They didn’t intrude, but their playing was a welcome embellishment throughout.

Two especially noteworthy elements were the color and the choreography. It was a riot of color, which I’d describe as psychedelic if it weren’t for how sharply defined every fanciful object and background was. And the choreography was a revelation. What I would’ve called clowning around when I saw it as a kid tonight looked like deceptively artful dancing. The scene where Dorothy encounters the Scarecrow may as well be called a pas de deux. Ray Bolger had a genius that made stumbling look poetic.

True enough There’s no place like home – but neither is there anyplace quite like Tanglewood, where fondly recalled experiences from childhood can be reprinted in memory in the most delightful Technicolor fashion.

Beach Boys at Tanglewood, Aug. 18, 2014

Article by Dave Read

The Beach Boys, in the persons of Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and replacements for Brian, Carl, Dennis Wilson, and Al Jardine, did an estimable job of re-creating the mid-60s pop music milieu during their concert at Tanglewood for an audience primarily in their mid-60s.

Love was energetic and engaging frontman; there was a big segment of the show when scores of people were allowed to cram the aisle along the stage and he traded high-fives with dozens of them. Then, as the band launched into Barbara Ann, the 1965 cover that was one of the band’s biggest hits, he helped a couple of young girls scramble onto the stage and eventually there were several youngsters rocking out, including one who got paired up with the lead guitarist. (Barbara Ann at 1:25 of the video)

Beach Boys play Good Vibrations and Sloop John B

The two hour show began with the band racing through an 8-song set of beach-specific songs and included dozens of the band’s most popular hits from “back in the day.” Also included were a couple of nicely done covers – California Dreamin’ and Why Do Fools Fall in Love and something new, Pices Brothers, which Love wrote in tribute to George Harrison. Personal favorites Good Vibrations and Sloop John B evoked welcome flashes back to the days of dusty stacks of wax!