August 9, 2017 – (Becket, MA) Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient John Heginbotham and acclaimed illustrator and author Maira Kalman join forces in the world premiere of The Principles of Uncertainty, closing the Festival in the Doris Duke Theatre, August 23–27. Co-commissioned by the Pillow and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and developed during multiple Pillow Creative Development Residencies, The Principles of Uncertainty is an evening-length dance theatre work choreographed and directed by Heginbotham, designed by Kalman and inspired by her written and visual art, and set to a score composed, arranged, and curated by Brooklyn Rider and Silk Road Ensemble’s Colin Jacobsen. Members of The Knights, Jacobsen’s innovative chamber orchestra, will perform live, and Maira Kalman herself is also featured in the performance.
Each of the collaborators are deeply respected in their own fields. John Heginbotham received the 2014 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award; Andrew Boynton of The New Yorker has commented “The mind of John Heginbotham is a magical place…[he] has such a strong choreographic personality—a refreshing mixture of casualness and discipline, lunacy and sincerity.” Kalman is a celebrated literary and visual artist, and the author and illustrator of more than a dozen books, including The Principles of Uncertainty, based on her illustrated column for The New York Times; of which critic Ariel Levy wrote, “Her depictions here of radiant fruit bowls, pink bedrooms and people in flamboyant hats make the case that our consolations for loss, bewilderment and impending death are beauty, humor and surprise. And Kalman can be very witty, particularly in the face of the grim and the unsolvable.”
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