Jacob's Pillow Reveals Four Festival 2016 Artists

Following the record-breaking attendance and ticket sales of Festival 2015, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival moves into another season of exciting programming and artistic excellence. The Pillow announces four companies that will perform at Festival 2016: the dynamic audience favorite Aspen Santa Fe Ballet; tap dance sensation and 2015 MacArthur Fellow Michelle Dorrance and her company Dorrance Dance in ETM: Double Down; Festival 2015's breakout star Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, and a rare U.S. appearance of the all-male, France-based ensemble Compagnie Hervé KOUBI.

Festival 2015 Attendance

Festival 2015 was the most successful season on record for Jacob's Pillow, a National Historic Landmark, National Medal of Arts recipient, and home to America's longest-running dance festival. The past summer also marked former Executive and Artistic Director Ella Baff's final season, a position she held for 17 years. The Pillow hosted more than 101,000 visitor experiences throughout Festival 2015, including ticketed performances, free performances, free talks, tours, dance classes, film screenings, exhibits, and various other community events. Despite a season of particularly stormy weather resulting in several performances with limited indoor seating, the Pillow's free, outdoor Inside/Out performance series remained popular, closely matching last year's highest attendance on record at more than 22,000 attendees. The newly-renovated Blake's Barn, home to the Pillow's extensive dance Archives, received record-breaking attendance, hosting more than 14,200 visitor experiences through visits to exhibits and the Archives, as well as the free PillowTalk series. The renovation of Blake's Barn added 1,200 square feet of climate-controlled archival storage and documentation workspace, as well as 700 square feet to the Reading Room, featuring multiple new HD viewing stations and ample space for public access. In addition to landmark attendance at more than 200 free events, Jacob's Pillow issued more than 50,000 tickets, marking the most tickets sold in the organization's history and totaling more than $2.2 million in ticket revenue.

"It is energizing to recount the tremendous success of the 2015 season, a true testament to the financial and artistic successes that occurred during Ella Baff's 17-year tenure," says Jacob's Pillow General Manager Andrea Sholler. "Ella and the Jacob's Pillow board have advanced this organization in a way that many of us who worked at the Pillow in the 1980s never dreamed possible. I'm looking forward to working with the Pillow's next Director to continue to move this unique organization forward."

Festival 2016 Early Announcement

Following this record-breaking season, Jacob's Pillow reveals four of Festival 2016's genre- and globe-spanning companies in advance of the full season lineup announcement in December. Aspen Santa Fe Ballet will open the Festival in the Ted Shawn Theatre June 22 - 26, performing the East Coast premiere of a Jacob's Pillow commissioned work by Catalonian choreographer Cayetano Soto. This "sleek and versatile" (Janine Parker, The Boston Globe) company's program will also include the poetic full company work Silent Ghost by celebrated Spanish choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, and other works to be announced.

Succeeding a Jacob's Pillow Festival 2015 engagement proclaimed "love at first sight" (Janine Parker,The Boston Globe) and "all fun and gorgeously danced" (Siobhan Burke, The New York Times),Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart of Germany makes its Ted Shawn Theatre debut, July 6 - 10. Under the artistic direction of Canadian dancer and choreographer Eric Gauthier, the company had their first evening-length weeklong U.S. engagement during Festival 2015 to sold-out houses. This year's program will include Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti's exciting ensemble work Cantata performed with live music by the all-female ensemble Assurd, among other works to be announced.

Following sold-out engagements in both 2014 and 2015, MacArthur Fellow, New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award recipient, and 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award recipient Michelle Dorrance, in partnership with Nicholas Van Young, and Dorrance Dance return to the Ted Shawn Theatre, August 10 - 14. The company will present the new evening-length work ETM: Double Down, an expansion of ETM: The Initial Approach which premiered at Jacob's Pillow in 2014 and was created during Creative Development Residencies at the Pillow. ETM utilizes Young's original electronic musical devices to create a live sound score and push "the boundaries of tap while exposing its true nature: that it is music" (Gia Kourlas, The New York Times).

August 3 - 7, France-based Compagnie Hervé KOUBI makes a rare U.S. appearance in the Ted Shawn Theatre in the highly physical and awe-inspiring evening-length work What the Day Owes to the Night.Led by the artistic vision of choreographer Hervé Koubi, the all-male company is comprised of 12 dancers from Algeria and Burkina Faso who combine capoeira, martial arts, hip-hop, and contemporary dance with "mesmerizingly fluid strength" (Brian Seibert, The New York Times) and perform as if "there [is] no such thing as physics" (Rebecca Ritzel, The Washington Post).
Tickets for Festival 2016 go on sale to members starting January 11, 2016 and single tickets go on sale to the public April 1. Visit jacobspillow.org for additional information.

Jacob's Pillow Year Round

Beyond its summer festival, Jacob's Pillow is an active year-round organization. Through Jacob's Pillow Curriculum in Motion, a nationally-recognized program, Artist Educators work with Berkshire County teachers and students grades K-12 to transform curricula such as biology, literature, and history into kinesthetic and creative learning experiences. 2015-2016 Curriculum in Motion residencies will take place at Conte Community School, Becket Washington Elementary, and Monument Mountain Regional High School. Creative Development Residencies take place at the Pillow throughout the year. Dance artists are invited to live and work at Jacob's Pillow for one to three-week residencies and during that time they are given a stipend, housing, and unlimited access to rehearsal space, the Archives, and staff support. In the fall months of 2015, Sara Mearns, Jodi Melnick, John Heginbotham, and Maira Kalman participated in Creative Development Residencies at the Pillow. In April of 2016, choreographer Michelle Dorrance and her company will enjoy a week-long Creative Development Residency to develop ETM: Double Down.

Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive (JPDI) is the Pillow's online platform for videos and digital dance resources and remains active every day of the year. JPDI (http://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/) includes Festival artists and video content from the 1930s to 2015 with new content added each month. Following a full website redesign in May of 2015, JPDI has experienced a 168% increase in daily visitation with new users at 81.3% and a global reach of 27% of users based outside of the U.S. The Jacob's Pillow Intern Program is also active year-round, offering hands-on work experience to college students and recent grads seeking a deeper education within arts administration and production. At the same time,The School at Jacob's Pillow is hosting international auditions and workshops and planning its national audition tour, which will kick off in January in Miami. The School at Jacob's Pillow is a leading center for professional advancement; each year thousands of dancers audition and apply and only 100 are selected to participate in one of four programs in Ballet, Contemporary, Cultural Traditions, and Musical Theatre Dance. The international students of The School are immersed in Festival life as they take class, attend seminars, and learn classic and new dance work from today's greatest choreographers, mentors, directors, musicians, and Broadway performers.