Jacob's Pillow Announces The 2018 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award Recipient

Faye Driscoll, hailed as "a postmillenium postmodern wild woman" (Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice) for her work that is a "tour de force of performance and direction" (Brian Seibert, The New York Times), receives the 12th Annual Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. The Bessie Award-winning choreographer, director, and alumnus of The School at Jacob's Pillow joins a group of honorees that includes Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, Kyle Abraham of Abraham.in.Motion, Michelle Dorrance of Dorrance Dance, Camille A. Brown of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and Liz Lerman of Dance Exchange. The Award will be formally presented as part of the Jacob's Pillow Season Opening Gala on June 16, 2018 followed by the presentation of Driscoll's work at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival for the second consecutive summer, August 1-5.

"Faye Driscoll is an artist/philosopher who is asking important questions: what does performance tell us about participation and about our responsibility to engage? She is keenly aware that the moment of performance is only made by the presence of both performer and audience member, and she is interested in the highly charged space that forms between them. She's consistently interrogating what it means to be human and all the ways we put on personas in our lives. She's unafraid to take risks, to ask questions we may not want to ask, and it's the purity of that quest that I so admire. We are also so proud that she is an alumnus of The School at Jacob's Pillow," says Jacob's Pillow Director Pamela Tatge.

"I am honored to receive this award and be a part of the stupefying history that is Jacob's Pillow. I was a student at the Pillow when I was 19. I remember sweating profusely in the Horton workshop all day, and then having my mind expanded watching all of the magical companies perform at night. It is profound for me to have my work become a part of the incredible legacy of Jacob's Pillow. I feel like I am holding that vulnerable 19-year-old who watched from the wings proudly in my heart," says Jacob's Pillow Dance Award Winner Faye Driscoll.

In her own words, Driscoll's work as a choreographer and director is rooted in "an obsession with the problem of being 'somebody' in a world of other 'somebodies' and all of the conflicts and comedy born in our interactions with others." By creating an immersive world of sensorial complexity and perceptual disorientation through an unwavering exploration into the ritual of performance, Driscoll investigates meticulously structured improvisatory choreography amidst set, sound, production, and audience interaction.

In her most recent body of work, the Thank You For Coming series, Driscoll extends the sphere of influence of performance, creating a communal space where everything is questioned, heightened, and palpable. Praised by Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine as "the most engaging performance I've seen in a long time," the Thank You For Coming trilogy's two current iterations have been commissioned and presented nationally and internationally by acclaimed presenters over the past four years, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project.

Director Pamela Tatge will present Driscoll with the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award as part of the Season Opening Gala on June 16, where she and her company will perform. Driscoll will present the newest installment of the trilogy, Thank You For Coming: Play, at the Festival August 1-5, lead a Master Class open to the public on Sunday, August 5 at 10am, and participate in a free PillowTalk titled Award-Winning Faye Driscoll on Friday, August 3 at 5pm.

The Jacob's Pillow Dance Award was created in 2007 by an anonymous donor whose commitment to an ongoing annual gift to Jacob's Pillow of $50,000 is generous and far-reaching. The Award, presented each year to an artist of exceptional vision and achievement, carries a cash prize of $25,000 which the artist can use in any way they wish. The remaining $25,000 supports the Pillow's commitment to the the research and development of new work in the recently launched Pillow Lab. Residencies at the Pillow Lab offer free housing, unlimited use of studio space, and access to the Pillow's rare and extensive Archives and resources, in the beautiful retreat-like atmosphere in Western Massachusetts all year long. In commemoration, the honoree also receives a custom-designed glass award sculpture by Berkshire-based artist Tom Patti, whose work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and other arts institutions around the world.

Faye Driscoll is a Bessie-award winning performance maker whose works include Wow Mom, Wow (2007), 837 Venice Boulevard (2008), There is so much mad in me (2010), You're Me (2012), Thank You For Coming: Attendance (2014), and Thank You for Coming: Play (2016).

Her work has been presented at venues nationally such as the Wexner Center, the Walker Art Center, The Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston, MCA/Chicago, Wesleyan University, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, the American Dance Festival, and internationally at the Théâtre de Vanves' Festival Artdanthé, Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Melbourne Festival, Belfast International Arts Festival, and Centro de Arte Experimental (Universidad Nacional de San Martín) in Buenos Aires. Her work was exhibited in Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum, and included in NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial, the first biennial at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Driscoll has collaborated with theater and performance artists such as Young Jean Lee, Cynthia Hopkins, and Taylor Mac and recently choreographed for Madeline's Madeline by Josephine Decker. She will make her Broadway debut choreographing for Straight White Men at Second Stage Theater this summer. Driscoll has been funded by The MAP Fund, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, a NEFA National Dance Project, Production Residencies for Dance Grant, and French-US Exchange in Dance grant, the New York State Council on the Arts, a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award winner and a 2016 United States Artists Doris Duke Fellow.

Driscoll was a student of the Modern Traditions Workshop at The School at Jacob's Pillow in 1994. As a performer, Driscoll toured with Doug Varone & Dancers, performing with them at the Pillow in 2001. She made her Pillow debut as a choreographer in 2017 with the work Thank You For Coming: Attendance.

Jacob's Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, recipient of the National Medal of Arts, and home to America's longest-running international dance festival. While celebrating its 85th Festival in 2017, the Pillow announced its transition to becoming a year-round center for dance through a five-year strategic plan titled Vision '22. Each Festival includes more than 50 national and international dance companies and over 350 free and ticketed performances, talks, tours, classes, exhibits, events, and community programs. The School at Jacob's Pillow, one of the most prestigious professional dance training centers in the U.S., encompasses the diverse disciplines of Ballet, Contemporary, Musical Theatre Dance, Choreography, and an annual rotating program (Gaga in 2018). The Pillow also provides professional advancement opportunities across disciplines of arts administration, design, video, and production through seasonal internships and a year-round Administrative Fellows program. With growing community engagement programs, the Pillow serves as a partner and active citizen in its local community. The Pillow's extensive Archives, open year-round to the public and online at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, chronicle more than a century of dance in photographs, programs, books, costumes, audiotapes, and videos. Notable artists who have created or premiered dances at the Pillow include choreographers Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey, Donald McKayle, Kevin McKenzie, Twyla Tharp, Ralph Lemon, Susan Marshall, Trisha Brown, Ronald K. Brown, Wally Cardona, Andrea Miller, and Trey McIntyre; performed by artists such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Carmen de Lavallade, Mark Morris, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Edward Villella, Rasta Thomas, and hundreds of others. On March 2, 2011, President Barack Obama honored Jacob's Pillow with a National Medal of Arts, the highest arts award given by the United States Government, making the Pillow the first dance presenting organization to receive this prestigious award. For more information, visit www.jacobspillow.org.

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