2011 Summer Snapshots: Notes from Tour – Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

Dear ______,

I know it’s been some time since we’ve corresponded, but after a couple of months off, we are back in action and there is so much to tell you about what the company is doing. With the turn of the weather, we have officially kicked off our summer season and with it, the debut of K+C Extended. So instead of needing just one mini van, the twelve of us dancers piled into two Town and Country’s early in the morning and made the three-hour drive out to Jacob’s Pillow last week. Everyone in the other van slept the whole way here.  Our van passed the time by playing 20 questions and looking up funny YouTube videos. Pick your flavor.

As soon as we arrived, we quickly settled into our 6-bedroom house on campus and then we went right into tech rehearsal for our performance of RUNAWAY at the Jacob’s Pillow Gala that same evening. We shared the program with some incredible artists, including Phillip Glass who played live.  Afterward, we sat down to dinner with the gala attendees. When the live jazz band struck up a chord we thought we would have to be the ones to get the party started on the dance floor but you should have seen this crowd! I’ve never seen so many people desert their dessert so quickly. It really was a ball and we left the party with the best kind of favor, several new friendships.

From that grand opening, the week unfurled delightfully from there. We were invited to spend our day off at the home of the Greer family who serve on the Board of Directors of the Pillow. We swam in the pool, laid out in the sun, and even took an expeditious hike to a river where we coated ourselves in the mud from the riverbed. Days later, in between rehearsals, we made a group trip to the nearby quarry to go cliff jumping. The outing wasn’t for the faint of heart! The first thing you had to do was swing from a rope over an outcropping of rocks and drop 20 feet into the water. From there, you could swim out to another cliff, which you had to scale in order to do the next jump. Several of us even elected to do the big jump, which had to be about 45 feet. It became a group venture as those that remained below encouraged and cheered those of us above to go for it. It was probably the scariest and most satisfying thing I’ve done in a long time. And while all of us have the bruises to show for it, the photos and video clips are priceless.

Even in the midst of these serene and picturesque surroundings, it comes back to the dancing, the reason we are here. And we’ve been doing our fair share of that!  With the addition of six new dancers, we are able to at last perform the large-scale works that Larry has choreographed on other groups including MEGALOPOLIS and RUNAWAY.  This milestone for us is a momentous one, and it seems appropriate that we are celebrating it here in this historic place.  Walking around this campus with its longstanding buildings and studios, looking at old photographs and newspaper clippings of the creative greats, hearing stories of all that has happened here, you immediately sense the meaningfulness of your place in this continuum of collective history and the richness of all the personal histories that have built this place. I’m realizing that a creative educational institution and a dance company are not so different from one another. Both rely on the dedication, hard work, and conviction of its people to stick around, to weather the challenges of trying to bring something new into the world. And for them to not only survive, but flourish, there has to be great love at their centers, a sense of connection, of community, of family. Just a year ago Jacob’s Pillow was about to lose one of it’s most eminent performance venues when its community came together to save the outdoor performance space where the Inside Out dance series takes place throughout the summer. The new stage is more beautiful than ever and sure to bring great dance to audiences for years to come.

The other day, I had just arrived in the dressing rooms when new member Kit McDaniel asked me to take a picture of her signing the backstage wall. To give you an idea of what this space looks like, all the surfaces of the backstage area and dressing rooms are covered in signatures, insignias, and notes from companies and dancers that have performed in this space for decades. On one particular panel was the K+C logo and surrounding it were the very names of the company members whose footsteps we’re following in, original members like Nicole Wolcott, Alexander Gish, Ying Ying Shiau, and Julian Barnett. It hit me, watching Kit add her name to this impressive roster, just how much love had been given so that we could stand here today, building on the progresses of our predecessors.

Favorable reviews, awards, and recognition…they come and go but it’s clear that family sticks. And ours is only growing.

Kristina Hanna