Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award Winners
Ever since the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award was established in 2007, some of the dance world’s most innovative and visionary individuals have been selected for this honor.
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New York City Ballet
Gustave Le Gray No. 1, 2024
You can catch a brief glimpse of the 2024 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Awardee, Pam Tanowitz, at the very beginning of this clip as she stands up from the piano bench and exits the stage. It was the idea of New York City Ballet’s Associate Artistic Director, Wendy Whelan, to present this 2019 Tanowitz ballet in celebration of her award.
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Misty Copeland, 2023
While Misty Copeland hasn’t yet performed at Jacob’s Pillow, this short film includes performance excerpts from her dancing in Giselle, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, as well as a 2014 PillowTalk in which she discussed her training and career, just a year before her history-making promotion to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre.
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Dormeshia
Unsung Sheroes of the 20th Century, 2022
Dormeshia received her Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2021, nearly 30 years after her Pillow debut. In this evocation of specific “shero” performers—directed by Dormeshia and premiered at the Pillow—we first see and hear Brinae Ali before Dormeshia takes the stage, demonstrating why The New York Times has hailed her as “the queen of tap.”
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Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
The Equality of Night and Day, 2022
Even though the 2020 Festival was presented entirely online, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award was nevertheless bestowed upon Ronald K. Brown in an online ceremony. Two years later, he brought his company to present the world premiere of The Equality of Night and Day, with composer Jason Moran performing his commissioned score live.
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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Eastman
Fractus V, 2018
The Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, winner of the 2022 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, has demonstrated an extraordinarily wide range in works for Beyoncé, Broadway and beyond. Here he’s seen among the dancers in his own 2015 work, Fractus V—a work that’s also discussed in this podcast.
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Ballet Hispánico
Línea Recta, 2017
Recipient of the 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has directed the Pillow’s Contemporary Ballet Program since its inception in 2020. She has been called “one of the world’s busiest choreographers” by Wendy Perron in Dance Magazine, and it’s easy to see why in this excerpt from a work co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow.
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Faye Driscoll
Thank You For Coming: Attendance, 2017
Faye Driscoll, recipient of the 2018 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, has been hailed as “a postmillenium postmodern wild woman” by Deborah Jowitt in The Village Voice. The Bessie Award-winning choreographer and director is an alumna of The School at Jacob’s Pillow. In her series of works under the umbrella title of Thank You For Coming, Driscoll creates a communal space where everything is questioned, heightened, and palpable.
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Camille A. Brown & Dancers
BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, 2017
Camille A. Brown, recipient of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2016, returned with her company in 2017 for its first engagement in the Ted Shawn Theatre. Ever since she became the first woman to receive the Princess Grace Award in Choreography in 2006, she has garnered important awards and nominations as well as high-profile assignments on Broadway, film and television, and at the Metropolitan Opera where she holds the distinction of being the first Black artist to co-direct a production.
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Liz Gerring Dance Company
glacier, 2015
Recipient of the 2015 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, Gerring brought her company back to the Pillow that year in glacier. From its inception in 1998, Liz Gerring Dance Company has been exploring non-narrative, abstract movement. The company is noted for its close collaborations with contemporary visual artists as well as a longtime association with electronic music composer Michael J. Schumacher.
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Dance Heginbotham
Chalk and Soot, 2014
When John Heginbotham won the 2014 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, he further cemented a Pillow relationship that had begun in 1990 when he first came as a student in Bessie Schönberg’s choreography workshop. In the same season when he won the award, his company presented the world premiere of Chalk and Soot.
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Dorrance Dance
The Blues Project, 2013
2013’s Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award winner was Michelle Dorrance, seen here in a choice solo from the world premiere engagement of her Blues Project with music by the incomparable Toshi Reagon. Audiences continue to fall in love with this charismatic performer, and here you can see both a solo passage and a group section woven together to provide a taste of the overall production.
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Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion
Pavement, 2013
Barely a month after this excerpt from Pavement was filmed, Abraham.In.Motion returned for a Creative Development Residency, and soon after that the MacArthur Foundation announced that Kyle Abraham would receive one of its 2013 “Genius” grants. Clearly the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recognized a young artist on his way up!
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Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company
Story / Time, 2012
The 2010 Award-winning Bill T. Jones himself held center stage in his fascinatingly complex conception from 2012 entitled Story/Time. This engaging and ever-changing work, inspired by John Cage’s Indeterminacy, juxtaposed one-minutes stories told (and sometimes sung) by Jones with the intricate dancing of his company members.
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Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM
Dark Matters, 2011
When Crystal Pite was chosen to receive the 2011 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, the only work of hers that had been seen at the Pillow up to that point was Lost Action. The phenomenal success of Dark Matters in 2011 took many audience members by surprise, and popular demand brought this same work back to the Pillow for an extremely rare return engagement in 2012.
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Big Dance Theater
Supernatural Wife, 2011
The winners of the initial 2007 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, work collectively under the banner of Big Dance Theater. This 2011 excerpt from Supernatural Wife employs their trademark mash-up of sources and influences, combining Greek drama and the screenplay of a 1940 screwball comedy.
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Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Sounddance, 2009
The 2009 performance seen here was a truly historic one—as part of the last engagement during Cunningham’s lifetime, and the last time that he himself saw his dancers. The performance was streamed to his laptop so that he could view it at home in his final days, and you can view this thrilling moment from Sounddance as a reminder of Cunningham’s towering legacy.
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Alonzo King's LINES Ballet
Migration, 2008
Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet has been a frequent Pillow attraction since their initial engagement in 2000, and this excerpt from Migration reveals the superhuman qualities of King’s dancers, demonstrating why he was singled out for the 2008 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.
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Twyla Tharp with Norton Owen, 2001
Presented by Senator Elizabeth Warren to commemorate Norton Owen’s 50th season at Jacob’s Pillow, the 2025 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recognized the contributions Owen has made to the dance field as the Pillow’s Director of Preservation. This brief stage appearance from 2001 shows him interacting with Twyla Tharp as her “celebrity guest” in The One Hundreds.
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Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Hallelujah: In Praise of Fertile Fields, 2000
Liz Lerman, recipient of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2017, introduced an important era of radical inclusion in dance. From the multigenerational ensemble of the former Liz Lerman Dance Exchange to her more recent projects, her work exhibits “expansive range, emotional depth and singular beauty” (Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post).