Large Ensembles
The 2022 stage expansion in the Ted Shawn Theatre offers an opportunity to recall occasions when this and other Pillow stages were filled with ten or more performers. Sometimes more is more!
Next:
Miami City Ballet
Serenade, 2022
Filling the expanded stage of the Ted Shawn Theatre and fully utilizing the new orchestra pit for the first time, Miami City Ballet deployed 26 dancers and 17 musicians to bring George Balanchine’s Serenade to the Pillow.
Next:
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble
Crossing The Rubicon: Passing the Point of No Return, 2022
Donald McKayle enjoyed a special relationship with the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, and his final work made full use of the company’s resources to dramatize the plight of refugees in today’s world.
Next:
Dallas Black Dance Theatre
Like Water, 2021
For Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s first engagement here, the Pillow awarded its initial Joan B. Hunter New Work Commission to Darrell Grand Moultrie, resulting in this full-company premiere.
Next:
Sayat Nova Dance Company
"Groonger" from A Journey to Armenia, 2019
This Boston-based company preserves and promotes Armenian culture, as evidenced in this work by its director/choreographer, Apo Ashjian. This ‘Dance of the Cranes’ evokes the cranes that served as messengers of hope during the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Next:
Ballet BC
Bedroom Folk, 2019
Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal created this work for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2015, but it wasn’t seen in the U.S. until Canada’s Ballet BC brought it here in 2019.
Next:
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
The 40s, 2018
This signature work by Hubbard Street founder Lou Conte was included on most of the company’s Pillow programs during the 1980s and 90s, but had been unseen at the Pillow for nearly 25 years when it was brought back to celebrate Hubbard Street’s 40th anniversary.
Next:
Batsheva - The Young Ensemble
Naharin's Virus, 2018
Ohad Naharin’s program note for this work credited “an Israeli-American choreographer, an Austrian writer, Arab and Israeli musicians, and dancers from around the world,” reminding us that it sometimes takes many such elements “to create sublime moments that we could not have created alone.”
Next:
FLEXN
FLEXN, 2016
Before this Pillow engagement, FLEXN had been performed in New York City’s gargantuan Park Avenue Armory, with co-creator Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray appearing alongside his performers in a production overseen by visionary director Peter Sellars.
Next:
Compagnie Hervé Koubi
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (What the Day Owes to the Night), 2016
These 17 performers are all self-taught street dancers from Algeria and Burkina Faso, brought together by the French-Algerian choreographer Hervé Koubi to create a kinetic exploration of his roots.
Next:
New York Theatre Ballet
Dark Elegies, 2016
As this playlist’s sole offering from the Doris Duke Theatre, this is also one of only two works that dates from the Pillow’s first decade, and it was the first time that Antony Tudor’s contemporary classic had been presented here in more than 60 years.
Next:
Jazz/Musical Theatre Dance Program Ensemble
"The Battle of Yorktown" from Hamilton, 2014
Broadway choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler worked with all 24 members of the Jazz/Musical Theatre Dance Program to help flesh out ideas he would employ in Hamilton when it premiered off-Broadway six months later.
Next:
Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater
Bolero, 2014
Dame Libby Komaiko (1949-2019), created this signature work for her Chicago-based company in 1993, and it remained every bit as effective more than two decades later when the group made its Pillow debut.
Next:
Dance Theatre of Harlem
The Lark Ascending, 2013
Alvin Ailey created this work for his own company in 1972, but it looks remarkably at home on the Dance Theatre of Harlem, marking the first production of The Lark Ascending in which the dancers are on pointe.
Next:
Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Carmina Burana, 2012
Argentinian choreographer Mauricio Wainrot packed 20 dancers into his interpretation of Carl Orff’s powerful musical score, retaining Orff’s structure but creating an essentially abstract work.
Next:
Hālau I Ka Wēkiu
E Pele, E Pele, 2008
Although the company includes both male and female dancers, this chant for 14 male dancers seems perfectly attuned to its performance site, founded decades earlier by another group of men dancers.
Next:
Compagnie Heddy Maalem
Le Sacre du Printemps, 2008
These 14 dancers hail from Mali, Bénin, Senegal, Nigeria, and Guadeloupe, while choreographer Heddy Maalem was born to an Arab father and a French mother. He began working with African dancers in a project called Black Spring, and he conceived his Rite of Spring as an “echo” of that earlier work.
Next:
Batoto Yetu
Nzinga, 2003
The 34 performers in this work represent thousands of New Yorkers who have appeared with Batotu Yetu since its founding in 1990 under the direction of Júlio Leitão.
Next:
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Songs of the Wanderers, 2002
Not only is the stage populated by 17 performers in this 1994 work by Lin Hwai-Min, but hundreds of pounds of rice play an important role as well, especially in this climactic moment.
Next:
Twyla Tharp
The One Hundreds, 2001
The title sums it up, as Twyla Tharp utilizes a hundred members of the community to present a hundred dance phrases in this work that originated in 1970.
Explore Playlists
Urban Bush Women
Praise House, 1990
This full-evening work, co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow, was inspired by many visionary artists—especially by the life, words, visual imagery, and paintings of Minnie Evans—and these artists are brought to life onstage in songs, dances, instrumental music, and text.