In wake of the murder of George Floyd and increased national focus on the Black Lives Matter movement, Berkshire arts organizations are re-imagining how to tell stories in the most diverse and equitable way possible.
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MCLA and Berkshire museums bring energy in hard times
This spring, museums in the Berkshires are moving online. Cultural and creative places have faced abrupt disruption, and they are cutting back, but at the same time they are reaching out.
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Berkshire creative places are adapting to a virtual world
I’ve been talking with Berkshire creative places as they try to navigate in the physically distanced world coronavirus has created and reconnect online.
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Jacob’s Pillow adapts to the coronavirus pandemic
Jacob’s Pillow has had to adapt to the coronavirus, like many creative places who are doing what they can to care for their artists, staff and communities.
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Choreographer Camille A. Brown explores humanity and superpowers in ‘Ink’
A man and a woman rest their heads together, forehead to temple. Two young men lean shoulder to shoulder, looking up, as though they’re finding light in the night sky. In Bessie awardwinning choreographer Camille A. Brown’s Ink, they are superheroes set to fly.
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Reggie Wilson’s Fist and Heel Performance Group invokes black Shaker dance
Voices call and respond, as men and women move in a circle in a tresillo pulsing rhythm, keeping a beat with their hands and feet, and singing. They are moving together in an ecstatic ritual, a ring shout.
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Irene Rodríguez invokes Federico García Lorca in Cuban Flamenco
A woman walks down a mountain at sunrise, when the slopes are still dark around the rocks. Voices are singing to her: Roosters pick like axes and dig into the dawn … Amber copper, her body, with the scent of horses and shadow. Irene Rodríguez performs her own melding of […]
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Pilobolus dance company finds movement and connection in organic forms
They swing like saplings — roll and lift and orbit. Six dancers blend into three creatures, four-armed like dancing Shivas. They are wearing spare clothing the colors of their skin and moving in sunlight, to the sound of quiet strings and calling birds. Pilobolus has performed around the world for […]
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Ronald K. Brown and Evidence perform a world premiere to new Afro-Cuban music
Ronald K. Brown and Evidence will perform New Conversations: Iron Meets Water, a world premiere with live music by Grammy-winning musician Arturo O’Farrill at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
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Brazilian piano meets hip hop in Ephrat Asherie’s Odeon
In the early 1900s in Brazil, Ernesto Nazareth composed music for solo piano. Ephrat Asherie remembers the first time she heard a classical melody jazzed up with samba. Her brother Ehud is a jazz pianist, and as he played she imagined the composer blending Brazilian with Chopin, a Baroque artist […]
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