Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, summer dance concert series held annually near Lee, Mass., in the Berkshires. The site, originally an 18th-century farm, was purchased by the American modern dancer Ted Shawn in 1930, and three years later it became the home of his Men Dancers Company. A dance festival was inauguated here in 1940, and in 1942 the Ted Shawn Theater, the first in the United States designed specifically for dance, opened its doors. Today, the Jacob's Pillow complex includes three performance venues, a professional dance school, exhibition spaces, and other facilities. Dances at the festival have traditionally been eclectic and continue to include ballet, modern, ethnic, tap, and jazz.

---

Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

June-August

The second oldest dance festival in the United States (after the Bennington Dance Festival), the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival takes place for 10 weeks every summer at the historic Ted Shawn Theatre near Lenox, Massachusetts.
Edwin Myers ("Ted") Shawn was an innovative modern dancer and cofounder, with his wife Ruth St. Denis, of Denishawn, the first American modern dance company. In 1933, at his farm named Jacob's Pillow, he founded the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival as a summer residence and theater for his male dancers. After the group disbanded, Shawn turned Jacob's Pillow into a dance center of international importance—a place where not only ballet but modern and ethnic dance could be presented. Top dancers from all over the world give regular performances throughout the summer to packed houses.

CONTACTS:
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival
358 George Carter Rd.
P.O. Box 287
Becket, MA 01223
413-243-9919; fax: 413-243-4744
www.jacobspillow.org

SOURCES:
GdUSFest-1984, p. 85
(c)