David Roussève/REALITY

At Doris Duke Theatre: Jul 3 - Jul 7

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About

This performance took place July 3-7, 2019. Scroll for bonus content!

Dance, music, text, and video come together in David Roussève/REALITY’s new work Halfway to Dawn, a “heartfelt and heart-breaking homage” (Times Quotidian) to Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington’s prolific but long-obscured collaborator, known for singles like “Take the ‘A’ Train”, “Satin Doll”, and “Lush Life”. Interpreting Strayhorn’s signature music sensibility through a dynamic movement vocabulary which melds jazz, modern, postmodern, and social dance, Halfway to Dawn creates an abstract portrait of Strayhorn’s life as a gay, African American jazz composer in the 1950s-60s.

Led by “one of this country’s most inspired and inspiring dancemakers” (San Francisco Chronicle), David Roussève/REALITY returned to the Pillow after a developmental stint in the Pillow Lab. Read more in the program and PillowNotes.

Explore David Roussève/REALITY

Watch the Post-Show Talk

Choreographer/director/writer David Roussève and video designer Cari Ann Shim Sham in conversation with Jacob’s Pillow Scholar-in-Residence Theresa Ruth Howard.

In the Press

“The dancers’ bodies seem always a-curve, torsos and arms frequently describing circles in the air, or whole bodies eddying down and pooling out into soft rolls on the floor.” Read more from Janine Parker in The Boston Globe.

Dive into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive

This ever-growing collection includes dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today and new illustrated essays. Explore more from David Roussève/REALITY on JPDI: