Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Dance Heginbotham, and Liz Lerman Perform in Week 8 of Festival 2022

The eighth week of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2022 welcomes Hubbard Street Dance Chicago to the Ted Shawn Theatre, from Aug. 10-14. Week 8 of the Festival will also feature Dance Heginbotham on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage from August 10-14, and a performance by Liz Lerman with her new evening-length dance theater piece, Wicked Bodies, on the Jacob's Pillow grounds from August 10-13.

In addition to these onsite performances, PillowTalks will be offered free of charge in Blake's Barn. On Saturday, 2017 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award winner Liz Lerman will discuss both her latest book, Critique Is Creative: The Critical Response Process in Theory and Action, as well as her current performance work, Wicked Bodies, exploring a world of old crones, shape-shifters, familiars, and imps. On Sunday, winner of the 2022 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, Belgian-Moroccan dancer/choreographer/director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, talks about his work on stages and screens all over the world.

Additionally, on Sunday, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, Artistic Director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, will teach a ballet barre, followed by intermediate level modern dance center combinations exploring movement vocabulary and sequences of the Lester Horton Technique. The workshop will be open to intermediate/advanced dancers, ages 16+.

"This is an amazing week. We host the return of Hubbard Street to the Pillow under the new artistic direction of Linda Denise Fisher Harrell with a program that showcases the power of their high-octane dancers," said Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge. "We're also thrilled to finally be presenting two world premieres by Dance Heginbotham that had been slated for 2020. John Heginbotham is a favorite son of the Pillow as an alum of our School and winner of the 2014 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. And another long-awaited engagement is the hugely relevant and impactful Wicked Bodies, the newest creation by Liz Lerman, winner of the 2017 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award."

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's mission is to bring artists, art, and audiences together to enrich, engage, educate, and change lives through the experience of dance. The New York Times wrote that Hubbard Street Dance Chicago "ought to bottle itself as a cure for the ills of the era." The relationship between the company and the Pillow has been particularly close, encompassing more than a dozen engagements since 1983.

This program will include As the Wind Blows, choreographed by Amy Hall Garner, B/olero, choreographed by Ohad Naharin, and Little Rhapsodies, choreographed by Lar Lubovitch. Hubbard Street will also perform Aszure Barton's poignant BUSK, which has been called "nothing short of phenomenal" (WTTW Chicago). Barton is an innovator of form with an impressive career that includes choreographing for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the English National Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada.

Also during Week 8 of the Festival, Jacob's Pillow welcomes Dance Heginbotham to the Leir Stage, a company which has been celebrated for its vibrant athleticism, humor, theatricality, and commitment to collaboration, with a revival and two world premieres.

Dance Heginbotham will perform an evening of work in collaboration with Ethan Iverson, the critically acclaimed jazz composer, pianist, and Blue Note Records recording artist. The program features a revival; Easy Win (2015) draws inspiration from the collaborators' shared experiences within a formal ballet class. A whimsical ode to the repetition, drama, and humor of a dance class, Easy Win dissects its rituals with equal amounts of humor and sincerity through dancers that are "keenly alive to the main pulses of Mr. Iverson's music" (The New York Times). Adagio (World Premiere) is a solo featuring the Ukrainian dancer Vsevolod Mayevsky previously with the Mariinsky Ballet, displaced because of the war and now based in Germany. Finally, Dance Sonata, the program's second world premiere, picks up where Easy Win left off. If Easy Win highlights the rigors and training in the context of a ballet class, Dance Sonata is the finale for which the performers have been preparing.

From August 10-14, witches, trials, and exhibitions take flight in Liz Lerman's new acclaimed work, Wicked Bodies. Lerman and the unusual cast of performers have been exploring how our bodies become sources of evil and power-from fairy tales to government policies. Why is some knowledge celebrated, some criminalized, and some erased altogether? And who gets to document, describe, and save the remnants? In the presence of magic both old and new, and a surprising collection of witches, audiences will make their way through a restless story and a smashing of worlds. The multidisciplinary piece is designed specifically for a unique setting at Jacob's Pillow.

Aided by an award-winning design team and developed in part at the Pillow Lab, Lerman creates a world of seemingly supernatural elements, leading us into a post-extinction tale. Lerman is a MacArthur Fellow and a Jacob's Pillow Dance Award recipient whose work is rooted in intense research, described as having "expansive range, emotional depth and singular beauty" (The Washington Post).

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