Tap dance and flamenco artists are rehearsing in a spare and sunlit studio in a renovated barn. The rhythms of their feet and bodies becomes music and movement in one, and the energy builds between them as they improvise, challenging and laughing.
The dance world has had a hub in the Berkshires since modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn came here in the 1930s. Jacob’s Pillow International Dance Festival brings companies from across the country and across the world to his mountaintop in Becket.
Homegrown and global artists perform on college stages, theaters and concert halls, and community events get everyone on their feet together. And on a sunlit image, dancers (like the company at Long Beach City College) perform at Jacob’s Pillow.
Dancers, companies and choreographers come from around the world to the top of a mountain in Becket, where an old farm has become the campus of an international festival. The pioneering Modern dance choreographer Ted Shawn founded Jacob’s Pillow here more than 80 years ago.
Mass MoCA is now the largest contemporary art museum in the country, and one of the largest on the planet. Artists from across the U.S. and the world have come to show their work in a former mill North Adams along the Hoosic River.
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center brings music to the Berkshires year-round, and dance, film, comedy and theater as well, in a restored 1905 concert hall and cinema.
Williams College renovated a brick-and-column theatre into the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, a 21st-century performance space, with four stages and high-end sound and video. In the fall and spring, national and international performers appear here along with student groups, and in summer it is the home of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Williams College is named the top liberal arts college in the country, out in the Berkshire hills with an art museum, theater and music, talks and trails — and a spirit of making its own fun.
Contra and square dancing is a living New England tradition, as casual as dancing barefoot in the kitchen on a summer night. The North Berkshire Community Dance holds a monthly dance on second Saturdays at the Williamstown Community Preschool, with live music.
At the center of Sheffield’s town green, along Route 7, an old fieldstone and marble hall has acted as a community center for more than a hundred years. A community group hosts art shows and talks here, concerts, swing and contradances and the Dewey Hall Folk Series.
The Lenox dance has evolved from community gatherings with a local house band into a regional monthly gala — on Third Saturdays year-round — with bands from across the country and sometimes beyond.
The Barn at Lee brings artists in residence to the Berkshires, creating programs for emerging artists to have the time and space to explore creative ideas.
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