Jacob's Pillow launches new online resource

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on March 27, 2011 - 9:38pm

JACOB’S PILLOW LAUNCHES NEW ONLINE RESOURCE

JACOB’S PILLOW DANCE INTERACTIVE,

A PERFORMANCE VIDEO COLLECTION FROM 1937 THROUGH TODAY,

AIMS TO EXPAND ONLINE AUDIENCES FOR DANCE

(BECKET, Mass) - Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, National Historic Landmark and recent recipient of a 2010 National Medal of Arts, today launches Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, an online video collection of dance highlights from 1937 through 2010. Aimed at expanding global audiences for dance, this new resource offers a curated selection of videos by artists who have performed at Jacob’s Pillow over the past seven decades.

Dance Interactive features brief video clips ranging from 1930s footage of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers to HD videos of 2010 performances by Australian contemporary company Lucy Guerin Inc, dancer/choreographer Kyle Abraham, and Kuchipudi master Shantala Shivalingappa. The resource merges educational and entertaining features, including corresponding facts about the artists and a guessing game that allows users to test their dance knowledge. To experience Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, visit Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive.

“Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive is about expanding audiences for dance. People often assume there is a ‘secret code’ to understanding dance performances; with this new resource anyone can dive in and interact with the content. The performance clips are amazing, and you can explore freely on your own, have fun, and learn at the same time. It’s an engaging and satisfying experience for anyone who is brand new to dance as well as veteran dance-goers,” comments Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow executive and artistic director.

Bill Irwin [stephandriscoll_photocopyright_allrightsreserved]

Norton Owen, Jacob’s Pillow Director of Preservation, comments “We have been documenting virtually every performance at Jacob's Pillow for nearly thirty years, and we also have historic films that date to our very beginnings. All of these films and videos are available for viewing in their entirety in the Jacob's Pillow Archives, and we hope this new online resource will increase interest in exploring the riches of our entire collection. Now anyone with an internet connection can sample highlights that have been carefully chosen to celebrate some of the world's most extraordinary artists."

“Through a thoughtful development process, the team designed the site to be an easy to use, clean interface for people of all ages and interest levels in dance,” states Connie Chin, Jacob’s Pillow general manager and Virtual Pillow Director. “We’ve already discovered through user testing that people find the site extremely appealing and even addictive, especially the guessing game, through which they are learning about dance as they play.”

Aszure Barton [Liz Laser_photocopyright_allrightsreserved]

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive was inspired by and based on an interactive touch-screen kiosk that was created by the Pillow to celebrate its 75th Anniversary Year in 2007. With a desire to bring this interactive resource online, Jacob’s Pillow contracted digital agency ClearMetrics to create an online interface that is also tablet/mobile friendly. Dance Interactive, created with the open source software Drupal, employs a sophisticated tagging and filtering system which allows users to access videos through multiple entry points and paths of discovery including genre, era, and artist name. A gaming element offering random answer sets from the collection of archival content was introduced to help make the interface fun and engaging.

Accessibility to audiences all over the world was an important consideration in the creation of Dance Interactive, building on the global audience that Jacob’s Pillow already attracts. The navigation was designed to be primarily visual, with content text that can be easily translated into foreign languages with resources such as Google Translate.

Lucy Guerin Inc [Christopher Duggan photocopyright_allrightsreserved]

The content of the site is drawn entirely from films and videos recorded in performance at the Pillow. As such, they have never before been available outside the Pillow Archives and a related collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Many of the films from the Pillow's first three decades are silent, and soundtracks have been added in order to enhance the viewing experience. Among the films that have benefitted from this technique is a brief sequence featuring Anna Duncan, one of the adopted daughters of Isadora Duncan and a member of the group known as the "Isadorables." Because there is no authenticated footage of Isadora herself, this little-known 1942 film fragment is of enormous importance to the dance field.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive also includes:

Jacob’s Pillow founder Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers performing the iconic works Kinetic Molpai (1937) and Four Dances Based on American Folk Music (1938)

The only known moving images of Asadata Dafora (1942), regarded as the first artist to present authentic African dance and music on the American stage

Members of the Royal Danish Ballet in their U.S. debut, performing August Bournonville’s Konservatoriet (1955)

Pearl Primus in Spirituals (1950), one of the few moving images available of this groundbreaking artist

Merce Cunningham in Banjo (1955), documenting Cunningham's Pillow debut just two years after establishing his company

The first restaging of The Peony Pavilion in 300 years (1999), seen during a top-secret rehearsal period prior to its U.S. premiere at the Lincoln Center Festival

Desmond Richardson and Karine Plantadit in Ulysses Dove’s Episodes (2000)

William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman (2004) with Wendy Whelan and Peter Boal, recorded in his final year of performing

HD footage of recent performances by Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble, Shantala Shivalingappa, Barak Marshall’s MONGER, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and others (2010)

And many more artists and dance companies from around the world

Ruth St. Denis [johnlindquist_copyrightharvardtheatrecollection]

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive is the latest and most extensive offering of Virtual Pillow, a new series of digital programs produced by Jacob’s Pillow that provide unique, insightful, and entertaining online dance experiences. In addition to Dance Interactive, Virtual Pillow offers artist interviews and PillowTalks on FORA.tv; PillowTV, a YouTube channel for audience engagement programming; an online historical tour; a pilot series of short video clips of performances, classes, and artist interviews entitled DanceClips+; and a portal to the Pillow’s online communities. Virtual Pillow is a programming and technology initiative made possible by the Leading for the Future Initiative, a program of Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. NFF selected ten "artistically outstanding organizations" nationwide and invested in them to undertake a transformation, both in how they do business and how they create and deliver art. To experience Virtual Pillow, visit http://jacobspillow.org/Virtual-Pillow/.

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