Pillow Lab:
Winter/Spring 2022

Kayla Hamilton, a Black Disabled choreographer, will be using the Pillow Lab to engage in the beginning stages of a creative work and dialogue around Black Disabled artistry alongside several collaborators. Hamilton is an artist, producer, and educator originally from Texarkana, Tex., who now resides in Bronx, N.Y.

Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective, LDC, is an all female intergenerational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop. Founded by director and choreographer Michele Byrd-McPhee, LDC creates collaborative works that celebrate and center feminist narratives examining the intersections of gender, race, and resistance.

Gesel Mason is artistic director for Gesel Mason Performance Projects and associate professor of dance and choreography at the University of Texas at Austin. Mason will be using her time in the Pillow Lab to work on Yes, And, a collection of performance events that center an expansive vision of Black womanhood as the operating force in the creative process.

Already a celebrated principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, Taylor Stanley continues on his own journey, pursuing new movement frontiers. Building on Stanley’s two 2021 Pillow Labs, during which he worked on a Pillow-commissioned ensemble work by postmodern choreographer Jodi Melnick and a solo by choreographer Shamel Pitts, Stanley returns in 2022 with collaborators on two other works that will premiere at the Pillow during Festival 2022.

Ananya Dance Theatre is a company of cultural activists and BIPOC women, womxn, and femme artists who believe in the transformative power of dance. Fresh off of a tour of their newest work Dastak: I Wish You Me, Ananya Dance Theatre will begin the creative process for a new evening-length work during this Pillow Lab residency.

In collaboration with American Dance Abroad, the Pillow welcomes Naples-based choreographer Emma Cianchi as a part of Woman Made, an initiative focused on international women choreographers. Cianchi is the leading force of ArtGarage, and artistic curator of dance at the Teatro Bellini in Naples. As a choreographer her work embraces the use of new technologies in an eclectic and original manner.

Deborah Goffe is a dance maker, performer, educator, and curator whose commitments to locality, scalable intimacy, interdisciplinary, and the handmade compels her to cultivate environments and experiences through choreographic, design, and social processes. Goffe will be developing Liturgy|Order|Bridge in the Pillow Lab, a work inspired by communal embodiment in the Black church and the absurdity of Fellini’s ecclesiastical fashion show.

Irene Rodríguez will be in residence leading up to the Jacob’s Pillow Gala, developing a new work that has been commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow and the Vivienne Jones Endowment Fund at Jacob’s Pillow. Born in Cuba, and settled recently in the US, Irene Rodríguez is a leading international figure of Spanish dance and choreography.