Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A Weekly Orgy of Pillow Talk
BECKET, Mass. — Every Saturday night during the 10-week Jacob’s Pillow season here, the dancers gather in Bakalar Studio for a cast party. Surrounded by photographs and newspaper clippings from Ted Shawn’s days, the new generations lay down their own roots.
Last Saturday, a 21-year-old dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, Sebastian Kloborg, was looking both forward and back. He is the son of the director of the Royal Danish Ballet, Frank Andersen, and dancer Eva Kloborg, who performed at the Pillow many times in the 1970s and ’80s. In fact, the last timeMr. Andersen performed, in 1986, Ms. Kloborg was back in Denmark giving birth to Sebastian.
Making his first visit to the Pillow, Mr. Kloborg performed with the 12-member ensemble he leads with another 21-year-old dancer, Ulrik Birkkjaer. “This is a very special place, a sanctuary for dance,” Mr. Kloborg said, standing near a table with sandwiches that was marked “For Artists Only.”
He’d also spent some time exploring the Berkshires. “They don’t have hills in Denmark,” he observed. And what about the bars? “Our favorite place is the Locker Room,” a sports bar in nearby Lee, Mass., he said. When they were rehearsing in New York, they frequented the Emerald Inn at Columbus Avenue and 69th Street, along with dancers from the American Dance Theatre, who perform at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Soon they’ll be welcoming a New Yorker to lead their company: In 2008, a principal dancer of the New York City Ballet and faculty member of the School of American Ballet, Danish-born Nikolaj Hübbe, who studied at the Pillow in 1985, will succeed Mr. Andersen.
The Danes shared their party with the Brooklyn-based Big Dance Theater, whose directors, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, won the Pillow’s first Creativity Award this year. Of her stay at the Pillow, Big Dance Theater dancer Heather Christian said she missed her puppy, but not much else.
The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s 75th anniversary season has so far fulfilled the hopes of its executive director, Ella Baff. Theaters are at 90% capacity, a 5% increase over last year, and 25% above the national average for dance performances.
The success has much to do with the schedule put together by Ms. Baff. “I’m looking for variety, balance, and multiple points of view from the artists. One quality of the Pillow is that it’s hard to predict or typecast us. Every season, even in a week, it’s all over the map,” she said.
Ms. Baff said she is programming both for audiences and for the art form. “I’m interested in showing a worldwide view of different ways of dance-making. It helps the field, everyone, shake up their ideas.”
