Dutch National Ballet Makes Historic Jacob's Pillow Debut In Week 2 Of Dance Festival 2023

Ice Dance International, Querencia Dance Company, waheedworks, and The MasterZ At Work Dance Family to perform on the Henry J. Leir Stage.

By: A.A. Cristi Jun. 07, 2023

In the second week of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2023, the internationally renowned Dutch National Ballet will make its historic debut in the Ted Shawn Theatre, July 5-9. Week 2 of the Festival will also feature several one-night-only performances on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage, including Ice Dance International on July 5, Querencia Dance Company on July 6, waheedworks on July 7, and The MasterZ At Work Dance Family on July 8—tickets for which are available on a Choose What You Pay model. Tickets for all performances are now on sale.

In addition to these onsite and online performances, two PillowTalks will be offered free of charge in Blake's Barn. Great Barrington's Du Bois Freedom Center and the Du Bois Forum will spend the evening of July 7 honoring David Levering Lewis with a PillowTalk from 4:30 pm-5:30 pm and dinner at 7:30pm. On Sat., July 8, Dutch National Ballet member and former Bolshoi Ballet star, Olga Smirnova, will join a PillowTalk discussion about the dance world's responses to the war in Ukraine.

On Sat., July 8, the annual Pillow Pride Party, a LGBTQIA+ celebration, will return with a dance party and performances from the Dragon Sisters, surprise presentations, and more, following the evening performance of the Dutch National Ballet in the Ted Shawn Theatre. And on Sunday morning, intermediate/advanced dancers 12+ can participate in a workshop with Rachel Beaujean, the Associate Artistic Director of Dutch National Ballet.

“It's a big week at Jacob's Pillow as we host the exclusive East Coast engagement of the Dutch National Ballet,” said Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob's Pillow. “This will be a rare opportunity to showcase these stunning dancers. We are also honored to be hosting Great Barrington's W. E. B. Du Bois Center's celebration of writer David Levering Lewis and the Pillow debut of Philadelphia's waheedworks performing a stirring tribute to the movement of bodies in protest in conjunction with this collaboration. On Saturday, Pillow Pride takes over our campus with great performances and dancing under the stars.”

In a historic debut, Dutch National Ballet—one of the world's most critically acclaimed ballet companies—comes to Jacob's Pillow for the first time. Works will include: Variations for Two Couples, choreographed by Hans van Manen; Two & Only (Wubkje Kuindersma); The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude (William Forsythe); Grand Pas Classique (Victor Gsovsky); and Five Tangos (Hans van Manen, music by Astor Piazzolla). The performance will feature the company's newest member, former Bolshoi Ballet star Olga Smirnova, who joined Dutch National Ballet after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Internationally acclaimed, award-winning ice skaters Ice Dance International bring Berkshire audiences a rare opportunity to enjoy ice skating in the summer, performing in ice skates atop a special flooring. Ice Dance International showcases skating as a performing art for communities across the United States. The company will be premiering a new work, Energy Flow, in which performers explore multi-dimensional skating, flight patterns, pathways, and the release of friction with the goal of gliding toward a state of grace. Edward Villella, one of the company's founders, will attend the performance.

Boston salsa troupe Querencia Dance Company performs on the outdoor stage on Thursday, with high-energy dances by performance teams as well as a duet by company leaders Michelle Garcia and Julian De Las Nieves. The performance will include audience engagement and a mini social dance at the end of the performance, where audience members will be invited to salsa dance together.

On Friday, waheedworks will present Bodies as Site of Faith and Protest, a work that explores the idea of bodies uniting in protest, moving alongside and within Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech “We Shall Overcome.” This performance directly follows a free onsite PillowTalk, presented with Great Barrington's Du Bois Freedom Center and the Du Bois Forum, titled “Legacies of the Black Berkshires: An Evening in Honor of David Levering Lewis.”

A dance collective of fierce young performers from different dance backgrounds, The MasterZ at Work Dance Family will ignite the Leir Stage with jazz, hip-hop, street jazz, house, African, vogue, and contemporary dance. Led by Black trans femme choreographer Courtney Washington Balenciaga—a legend in the ballroom community—the company creates dances that represent resilience and which foster community in under-resourced areas of Brooklyn.

Formed in 1961, the Dutch National Ballet, the official ballet company of the Netherlands, strives to spread the art of ballet, at the highest level, far and wide to the public and today's audiences. This premier company combines classical and modern dance to create performances that have captivated audiences for ages. Director and choreographer Ted Brandsen has contributed to rejuvenating the full-length repertoire and increasing the company's international presence.

In 2013, the Dutch National Ballet was ranked as one of the top five dance institutions in the world (The New York Times). The company regularly performs at prestigious international venues and festivals.

Over the past 60 years, Dutch National Ballet, the only ballet company in the Netherlands, has evolved into one of the world's foremost ballet companies. With a unique and wide repertoire, a tradition of innovation, and around 80 dancers from all over the world, the company plays a leading role in Dutch cultural life and beyond.

The presentation of Dutch National Ballet at Jacob's Pillow is supported by the Dutch Culture USA program of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York.

Founded in 2014 as a nonprofit and based in Maine, the organization has built its local, national, and global image through live and virtual performances, including the company's recent 18-city U.S. tour of GRACE; the creation of two hour-long public television specials that aired nationally on PBS; and its educational and engagement programs. Ice Dance International (IDI) has been highlighted in The New York Times and Boston Globe critics picks.

IDI looks to “build a bridge from sport to art” while bringing the artistry of ice dancing into the public consciousness. Their programs are filled with grace, power, and artistry, as dances cover the ice with euphoria and dynamism. Endorsed by U.S. Figure Skating and the Professional Skaters Association, Ice Dance International works to continue developing ice dancing as a performing art through performance, community engagement programs, clinics, and their dance school, Skate 360.

Querencia Dance Company was founded in 2021 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Co-founders, Michelle Garcia and Julian De Las Nieves, have a shared goal of inspiring people through the arts and continuing to put Latin dance on not only a more visible map, but also an academic one. They founded Querencia with the objective to bring more prestige to the genre of Salsa around the city of Boston, and to spread that both nationally and internationally as well. Since 2022, the company has started to travel and teach internationally as choreographers, instructors, and performers, constantly eager to broaden the variety of their audiences.

Querencia Dance Company consists of three different teams who perform energetic, positive pieces. Their goal is to bring visibility to Latin dance, while establishing it as an academic art form.

Tommie-Waheed Evans is a queer Black dance maker who merges urban street dance and contemporary dance through movement propelled by gospel music and polyrhythmic sounds. Evans established waheedworks in Philadelphia in 2006 with a mission to create a radically collaborative body of work that speaks to human life through movement.

“Evans' performance is challenging and playful, reflecting his core creative values. It engages and challenges those involved, both on the stage and sitting in the crowd. It is a work that deemphasizes a linear narrative in favor of rhyming, echoing, and looping movements which elicit an emotional and empathetic response to how it feels to be a fellow human” (Surrealism Today).

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California amongst gang warfare and racial divide, Evans creates work that explores Blackness, queerness, liberation, and spirituality. Evans is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow who has received numerous accolades and honors, such as the Joffrey Ballet Winning Works and the Princess Grace Honoraria Award in Choreography.

Founder and choreographer Courtney Washington Balenciaga fuses genres together to express her experiences as a queer teenager, represent resilience, and encourage community in Brooklyn's under-resourced areas. For Balenciaga, her work is built on the foundation of dance's impact in providing her refuge during her gender transition, which sparked a creative, emotional, and physically liberated transformation.

Balenciaga is founder of the Kiki House of Juicy Couture, leader of The House of Balenciaga, and 2022 Latex Ball Avis Penda'vis Angel Award winner.

Members of The Masterz at Work Dance Family span a multitude of backgrounds. These young, fierce performers are all individually highly technical dancers, and together they ignite the stage. Street dance, jazz, ballroom, vogue, and hip hop all come together to make unique artistic performances. Their performances advocate for gender equality while giving a voice to their community.

Ice Dance International made their Pillow debut in 2019 as part of the Inside/Out series, performing In Flight, choreographed by Douglas Webster. They also performed Cool and Easy (2019) and Luminous (2019).

Hans van Manen's work was first performed at the Pillow in 1965, presented as part of the U.S. debut of Nederlands Dans Theater, a company that van Manen then co-directed. This was likely the first time that van Manen's work had been seen in America.

Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive:

Ice Group International in In Flight in 2019:

https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/ice-dance-international/in-flight/

PERFORMANCE & TICKET DETAILS

Dutch National Ballet

July 5-9, Wed., Thurs. and Sat. at 8pm; Fri.-Sun. at 2pm

Ted Shawn Theatre

Tickets from $60