Jacob's Pillow Announces 2019-2020 Pillow Lab Artist Residencies

Jacob's Pillow announces this season's artist residencies offered at the Pillow Lab, its year-round incubator of new work. The annual season of customizable residencies supports U.S.-based and international dance artists during crucial development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects. The 2019-2020 recipients include Kyle Abraham, Aszure Barton, Brian Brooks, Milka Djordjevich, Alice Gosti, Kinetic Light, Stephanie McKee-Anderson, Aakash Odedra, RUBBERBAND, Didy Veldman, and Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre.

"The Pillow Lab has become a vibrant and robust opportunity for artists to gain resources they need to develop their work. We're just beginning to see what a strong investment in the development of new work can mean in the creative lifespan of an artist, to our Festival and to the field at large" says Jacob's Pillow Director Pamela Tatge.

Artists and their collaborators receive unrestricted use of the Pillow's state-of-the-art facilities, which include the 7,000 square-foot Perles Family Studio, as well as the Doris Duke Theatre, a convertible black-box theater space with full production capabilities. Artists also receive free housing, a stipend, professionally filmed video documentation, access to the Pillow's extensive Archives, and funding for an "outside eye," an editor or dramaturg to provide important feedback. Artists benefit from the retreat-like atmosphere and generative landscape that the Pillow's remote location provides.

In its third year of serving artists, the Pillow Lab reimagined a residency program that has existed in various forms since the Pillow's inception in the early 1930s. Built from a field-wide scan which included interviews with a diverse group of 36 U.S.-based choreographers and examined existing choreographic residency programs at peer institutions, the Pillow Lab fits into the overall national and international dance ecology with a distinctive mission, vision, set of values, and approach.

Choreographers selected for a residency through the Pillow Lab are chosen by Tatge working with her curatorial team. Most residencies culminate with an informal work-in-progress showing as part of the In Process Series. Showings are limited to an intimate, invited audience of Jacob's Pillow Members and faculty and students from the College Partnership Program, and provide valuable feedback through a structured feedback session.

Previous Pillow Lab residency recipients include Ephrat Asherie, Bryan Arias, Ronald K. Brown, Jean Butler, Zoe Scofield, Bebe Miller, and Liz Lerman. Notably, four works developed at the Pillow Lab were performed as part of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2019 including David Roussève/REALITY's tribute to Billy Strayhorn, Halfway to Dawn; the world premiere of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group's POWER; Caleb Teicher & Company's More Forever in collaboration with composer Cornad Tao; and the collaboration between Sara Mearns and Wang Ramirez, No. 1.

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