Political Movement(s)
While it can been said that all dance is political in a sense, these dances seek to address public affairs more overtly.
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Camille A. Brown & Dancers
I AM, 2024
Inspired by the writings of Octavia E. Butler, Camille A. Brown highlights Black joy in this rousing world premiere.
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kNoname Artist | Roderick George
Venom, 2024
Choreographer Roderick George addresses the AIDS epidemic in this dance which earned him the inaugural Jacob’s Pillow Men Dancers Award.
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Danza Orgánica
Âs Nupumukômun (We Still Dance), 2023
The work of this Boston-based company is centered around equity, social justice, and decolonization, directed by Afro-Indigenous artist Mar Parrilla.
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Ananya Dance Theatre
Nün Gherāo: Surrounded by Salt, 2023
This historical and political work by Ananya Chatterjea was inspired by a massacre in West Bengal, exploring betrayal, dispossession, and exile.
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Mythili Prakash
She's Auspicious, 2023
This Pillow-commissioned work blurs the line between Goddess and Woman, exploring the dichotomy between celebration of the Goddess versus the treatment of women in society.
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Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
The Equality of Night and Day, 2022
Speaking of this dance (which incorporates words by political activist Angela Davis), Ronald K. Brown commented, “We must create the world WE want to live in.”
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Cirque Barcode and Acting for Climate Montréal
Branché, 2021
Three of the performers seen here were founders of Cirque Barcode, which teamed with Acting for Climate Montréal to draw attention to the climate crisis through circus arts.
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CONTRA-TIEMPO
joyUS justUS, 2021
This Los Angeles-based activist dance theater company was founded Ana Maria Alvarez, who describes this work as “a radical celebration of our humanity,” and “a passionate battle cry for our rising collective consciousness.”
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Martha Graham Dance Company
"Prelude to Action" from Chronicle, 2019
After this work was created in 1936, Martha Graham wrote, “Chronicle traces the ugly logic of imperialism, the need for conquest, the unavoidable unmasking of the rooted evil, and the approach of the masses to a logical conclusion.”
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Christopher K. Morgan & Artists
Pōhaku, 2019
As a native Hawaiian, Christopher K. Morgan explores compelling universal themes in the story of Hawaii’s native people, including land loss and fractured identity.
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Kyle Marshall Choreography
King, 2019
Using a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. as a soundscape, this solo imagines how ideas, words, and actions can instigate revolution while simultaneously acknowledging the struggle of one body.
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Paramodernities by Netta Yerushalmy
Revelations: The Afterlives of Slavery, A Response to Alvin Ailey’s "Revelations" (1960), 2018
While using movements quoted directly from Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, this work by Netta Yerushalmy draws much of its power from the text written and performed by Thomas F. DeFrantz.
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Roy Assaf Dance
The Hill, 2017
The Hill takes its name and inspiration from one of the fiercest battles of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War in 1967, and it was presented here in Roy Assaf Dance’s U.S. debut.
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FLEXN
FLEXN, 2016
Labeled “part protest, part dance party and part collective autobiography,” FLEXN was created by Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray in collaboration with his dancers, and an overall concept by visionary director Peter Sellars.
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Nimbus Dance Works
Strange Fruit, 2015
This solo by Pearl Primus was originally titled A Man Has Just Been Lynched when it premiered in 1943, set to the same text by Abel Meeropol that Billie Holiday had famously recorded in the1930s.
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Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company
Serenade / The Proposition, 2010
This is one of three works that Bill T. Jones was commissioned to create in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial, with text compiled from the writings of Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and others.
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Jane Comfort and Company
Asphalt, 2001
This “scripted dance” with music by Toshi Reagon creates an urban world juxtaposing squatters in a tenement building with the fantastic world of spirits.
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Yin Mei
Empty Tradition / City of Peonies, 1999
This work by Chinese-born Yin Mei reflects on her sense of being “robbed of history” during China’s Cultural Revolution.
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Zaccho Dance Theatre
Invisible Wings, 1998
This powerful work by Joanna Haigood was inspired by the Pillow’s 19th-century history as a stop on the Underground Railroad for enslaved people escaping to freedom.
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Stockholm / 59° North
Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven, 1997
Motivated by the AIDS epidemic, Ulysses Dove created this work and stated, “I want to tell an experience in movement, a story without words, and create a poetic monument over people I loved.”
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Dayton Contemporary Dance Company
Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder, 1990
This theatricalized depiction of a chain gang, created by Donald McKayle in 1959, has long been acknowledged as his masterpiece.
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Liz Lerman
Nine Short Dances about the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters, 1986
Once dubbed the “Democrat of Dance,” Liz Lerman created this work to protest military cost overruns, the threat of nuclear arsenals, and the arms race, addressing these issues in her own inimitable style.
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José Limón
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, 1946
In the hands of choreographer Doris Humphrey, Federico García Lorca’s elegy to a dead bullfighter also became a poignant meditation on all those lost in the recently-concluded world war.
Explore Playlists
Ted Shawn
John Brown Sees the Glory: An American Epic, 1935
During the Pillow’s very first season, Ted Shawn embodied an iconic abolitionist in this solo, which became a lightning rod of racial controversy wherever it was performed on tour throughout the U.S.