C A N N O P Y
Art is True North
Jacob’s Pillow
Complexions Contemporary Ballet - Photo by Sharen Bradford
Pamela Tatge on learning from a problematic past and building an inclusive future
Words By Hailey Scott
ISSUE 12 | BECKET | IN MOTION
The Massachusetts native dance collective, Jacob’s Pillow, is reshaping what it means to bring culture to the forefront of dance. Founded in 1931 by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn, Jacob’s Pillow has become a sanctuary for international artists to push the boundaries of movement. The fabric of Jacob’s Pillow is woven from the challenging of boundaries, nurturing of ideas, and celebration of a uniquely physical art form.
Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow, Pamela Tatge, is the visionary behind the hub’s collaborative and community development strategies. Notable for her commitment to promoting inclusivity in dance practices, Tatge intentionally seeks out artists from contrasting backgrounds in order to give underrepresented communities a voice, with the belief that this diversity will in turn enrich the audience experience. Named one of “The Most Influential People in Dance Today” by Dance Magazine in 2017, Tatge’s background in performance administration, artist and residency programming, and long-term planning has contributed to the Pillow’s evolution.
Although cultural mindfulness is at the forefront of the company’s current vision, a historical perspective of Jacob’s Pillow has to contend with what we now realize as practices of cultural appropriation. Its pioneering members extracted dances from marginalized communities and their cultural context to be presented as spectacle, profiting from these harmful stereotypes. In recent years, Jacob’s Pillow has made significant strides in addressing this history without revising it. By prioritizing cultural sensitivity and ethical artistic collaborations, the company has established clear guidelines for engaging with diverse dance traditions, emphasizing the importance of understanding the cultural significance behind the dances performed.
CANNOPY x Pamela Tatge
Organic Diversity
sM | Referred to as a “dance Mecca”, Jacob’s Pillow draws in artists from across the globe. How does your team manage to cultivate this cultural diversity without appearing contrived or performative in your outreach?
PT ─ The cultural diversity of the work that happens at Jacob's Pillow is deeply rooted, and that is why it is organic. It's rooted in the very beginnings of the festival when [Jacob’s Ladder’s founder] Ted Shawn would have programs that intentionally brought international artists to perform at Jacob's Pillow. Shawn brought Asadata Dafora of Sierra Leone, which was one of the first performances of African dance in the United States before an American audience. He made sure that there was international faculty in the school from the very beginning.
Over the years, Jacob’s Pillow grew to be the place where international companies made their U.S. debuts. These were companies that represented cultural traditions, like Black Grace from New Zealand that combines Indigenous and contemporary dance, to Netherlands Dans Theater that had its very first performance at Jacob’s Pillow. Then there’s diversity in terms of genre. There’s a deep history of flamenco at Jacob’s Pillow, there’s a deep history of tap dance. I think it’s because we’ve always celebrated dance as much more than any one definition, that we’re able to continue that tradition today.
Commitment to Access
sM | At the Pillow’s historic 90th anniversary gala, disabled artists were able to perform at the Ted Shawn Theatre for the first time. What room is there yet to foster a more inclusive environment for manifold bodies, and what other “firsts” do you hope to achieve in your tenure as the leader of this community?
PT ─ Accessibility, as it relates to disabled arts workers and audiences, is a part of our IDEA strategy — IDEA is what we call Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access at Jacob’s Pillow — and so we have been thinking about ways to be more accessible to disabled artists and audiences since 2017 when we began having regular training for our staff. Thinking broadly about who gets to dance on our stages, I would say that it was actually in bringing Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson, who really are known for challenging presenters to think deeply about their commitment to what is necessary to make accommodations for disabled artists and audiences. They had a residency at the pool in the former Doris Duke Studio Theatre, and they did an advance visit for that residency where they helped us trace the path for artists, from where they were going to be staying on campus, to where they would be eating, to their performance space.
Fast forward to the pandemic when we came back last year for our 90th anniversary, one of the exciting aspects of the Ted Shawn Theatre renovations was that the space is not only accessible to physically disabled dance artists, but also to technicians. I’m firmly committed to ensuring that we will continue to have the presence of disabled artists, understanding that there are many forms of disability, not just physically disabled artists. We had our first neurodiverse artists — choreographer Jenn Freeman worked with Sonya Tayeh and the Pillow Lab last year — so I am making an investment both in the creation of new works as well as in the presentation of the artists.
Crew Culture
sM | Jacob’s Pillow has publicly confronted some of the uncomfortable features of its past, particularly in relation to founder Ted Shawn’s culturally appropriative history. What inspired this self-critical initiative and how does it reflect the culture you’re fostering within the organization?
PT ─ What inspired that initiative was the culture that we want to build at Jacob’s Pillow. We want to build a culture of belonging. A lot of what we’re doing is trying to break down the systems that perhaps isolated us and made us only for one type of people. And that is precisely what our IDEA strategy is about. And we have to think about how people feel when they come to our campus. We began to speak most transparently about this when Williams College decided to mount an exhibition of the treasures of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. And in displaying some of the costumes, the images, the films of the works, we began to see and understand how people perceive it. I think everyone who’s ever thought about the history of Jacob’s Pillow has considered whether or not there are issues of cultural appropriation in the history of Shawn and St. Denis. But that exhibition put that into focus.
So we brought public discussions, at The Pillow Talk, around issues of cultural appropriation as it related to Ted Shawn. We talked about cultural appropriation. What does it mean? How is it defined? And we began to think about the relationship between the images that we have on campus and people's experience of our campus. It became clear at a certain point after 2018 that staff, artists, and certain audiences really had issues with the iconic paintings that have hung on either side of the Shawn stage. In order to be accountable to our culture of belonging, we made the decision to move those paintings. We could have them out in the open and have discussions about them, and yet they are not flanking the art that we are presenting. A percentage of our audience, staff, and artists experienced discomfort and harm from those images. So it was important for us to make that change.