The headline performance of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Hip Hop Across the Pillow mini-festival—which took place from August 2-6, 2023 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip hop—was an abundance of embodied knowledge. The triple-bill program featured two world premieres, both commissioned by the Pillow: “Thief of Hearts,” a duet choreographed and performed by hip hop luminaries Kwikstep and Rokafella, and “Parable of PassAge,” a collaboration between d. Sabela grimes and the Ladies of Hip-Hop. The evening ended with Rennie Harris’ 2016 work “Nuttin’ but a Word,” performed by Harris’ company, Rennie Harris Puremovement. Each piece on the program showcased a different facet of hip hop, highlighting the many ways the genre can be used to tell stories, educate, entertain, foster community, and honor individuality.
Performance
Place
Words
Featured
Puppet Master
He is the love of your life. You are his one-and-only. The pair of you is doomed: Obligations to the social order make your relationship impossible. The only way out—double suicide. Actually, this being eighteenth-century Japan, you let him literally do it all; still, you are his forever and there is no turning back.
Plus“Jérôme Bel”
Measured against his own criteria, French dance maker Jérôme Bel would seem a failure. In the eponymously named show that opened the L’Alliance New York Crossing the Line Festival last week, Bel professes he has no desire to entertain an audience.
PlusWith Humor and Flair
It’s a new era at Smuin Contemporary Ballet, but incoming artistic director Amy Seiwert was still invoking her old boss pre-curtain as the company toured its first program under her leadership to the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek.
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