Research Pillow Lab:
Emily Coates with
Ain Gordon, Derek Lucci,
and Charles Burnham

Emily Coates with Ain Gordon, Derek Lucci, and Charles Burnham

Research Residency (no invited showing) | October 18 – 27, 2024

Dancer and choreographer Emily Coates will return to the Pillow to develop her newest performance project, which draws on George Balanchine’s brief history in New England to reflect on how the body and spirit of a choreographer scatters, living on in unexpected places. Drawing on her background as a former member of New York City Ballet, and working with Ain Gordon (direction and dramaturgy), Derek Lucci (performer) and Charles Burnham (composer), she and her collaborators will collage traces of Balanchine and related artists, discovered in archives. Source materials will come from special collections (Wadsworth Atheneum, Houghton Library, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Jacob’s Pillow Archives), as well as the bodies of dancers who danced with him. Amplifying the quieted voices and neglected histories that lie on the outer orbit of a legacy, the project will result in an evening-length dance-theater piece for a multigenerational cast of performers and musicians.

Commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the project will also be provided with a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at The Church in Sag Harbor, New York, home to George Balanchine’s grave, and will culminate in a showcase at the Guggenheim Museum as part of the 2025 Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival. The project will continue to be supported with a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at the Catskill Mountain Foundation. Additional developmental support is provided by Jacob’s Pillow, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University, and New England Foundation for the Arts Dance Fund.