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    Rebuilding After Fire, Jacob’s Pillow Will Open a New Theater

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    The Doris Duke Theater, more than twice as large as the original and designed for modern technology, will open in July.When the Doris Duke Theater at Jacob’s Pillow, the bucolic dance festival in Becket, Mass., was destroyed by a fire four years ago, the festival’s director, Pamela Tatge, promised that it would be rebuilt.“The theater,” she said at the time, “is an essential component of the ecology of Jacob’s Pillow.”On Wednesday, Jacob’s Pillow announced that its new Doris Duke Theater would reopen on July 9, as part of its coming season. And the initial wave of programming there has been conceived specifically with the space in mind.“We all struggled when we lost the Doris Duke,” Tatge said in an interview. “But we had this moment to think of what we will build and why, and what sort of building we need in the future.”The campus of Jacob’s Pillow has other performances spaces: the large Ted Shawn Theater, and the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage. The old Doris Duke opened in 1990, with 230 seats and the look of a sleek barn.A $10 million gift from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, insurance claims and other gifts paid for the costs of the new theater. Jacob’s Pillow, Tatge said, wanted its new building to be a flexible space with “the ability to support the future of where this field is going.” The organization hired the Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo, and brought on the Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson as a consultant, to design a theater, Tatge added, “that was in dialogue with nature.”The result is a building nearly twice the size of the original theater, with a range of 220-400 seats and the ability to also house residencies and other events, perhaps at the same time. It will be equipped with a spatial audio system and specialized cameras for livestreaming and interactive video performances.Tatge said that next summer’s lineup of artists at the Doris Duke Theater was based on “works that could magnify and amplify the flexibility of the space, as well as works that demonstrate the intersection of dance and technology.”The programming includes the world premiere of Andrew Schneider’s “Here,” Shamel Pitts’s “Touch of Red” and Eun-Me Ahn’s “Dragons.” The Taiwanese choreographer and roboticist Huang Yi will make her Pillow debut, as will the Indigenous Sámi choreographer Elle Sofe. Faye Driscoll will return to the festival with her work “Weathering,” from last year, and Schneider and Pitts will create digital-first pieces.In the future, Tatge said, Jacob’s Pillow hopes to commission works that incorporate augmented reality, technology similar to video conferencing and other forms of mixed reality. And they can be developed year-round in the new building.“It will be a maker space,” Tatge said of the Doris Duke Theater. “At a time where there is a crisis of ambition in our country because a lack of resources, the fact that we’re going to be able to support artists — that is something.” More

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      Vladimir Shklyarov, Star Russian Ballet Dancer, Dies at 39

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      The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which announced the death, did not say how or where he died.Vladimir Shklyarov, one of the world’s premier male ballet dancers, died on Saturday night, according to the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where he was a principal dancer.The theater did not say in its announcement how or where Mr. Shklyarov, 39, died.Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal law enforcement agency, began an investigation into Mr. Shklyarov’s death, according to RIA Novosti, a state-run news agency. “A preliminary cause of death was an accident,” RIA Novosti quoted the Investigative Committee’s office in St. Petersburg as saying.Over a two-decade career, Mr. Shklyarov gained international acclaim, performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London and other prestigious theaters around the world.Born in Leningrad, Mr. Shkylarov graduated in 2003 from the Vaganova Ballet Academy, a famed institution with nearly 300 years of history. Its graduates include Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov.Mr. Shklyarov joined the Mariinsky directly out of school, and went on to perform in both contemporary and classical productions, including “Swan Lake,” “Don Quixote” and “Giselle.” He received multiple awards for his work, including the prestigious Léonide Massine International Prize in 2008. But the Mariinsky said that “the most precious for Vladimir” was receiving the title of an honored artist of Russia in 2020.Information about survivors was not immediately available. In 2012, Mr. Shklyarov married another dancer, Maria Shirinkina, who also performed with the Mariinsky, according to Russian news media.In a review of a performance during the company’s 2016 tour of the United States, a New York Times critic said, “The best moment came from Maria Shirinkina, supernaturally airborne, and Mr. Shklyarov, elegant and mournful, in a cobbled together extract from ‘Giselle.’ For a little while, they suggested another world.”A former ballerina, Irina Bartnovskaya, wrote on Telegram that Mr. Shklyarov had been at home, on painkillers and preparing for foot surgery before his death. She said that he went out to smoke onto “a very narrow balcony” and fell five stories in “a stupid, unbearable accident.”Her account could not be verified, but it echoed similar reports in Russian news outlets, including Fontanka, which quoted a Mariinsky Theater spokeswoman, Anna Kasatkina, as saying that he was on painkillers and expected to have surgery. More

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      Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Dancer of ‘Power and Radiance,’ Dies at 81

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      Judith Jamison, a majestic dancer who became an international star as a member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and who directed the troupe for more than two decades, building it into the most successful modern dance company in the country, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 81.Her death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, was announced by Christopher Zunner, a spokesman for the Ailey company, who said she died “after a brief illness.”Ms. Jamison performed Alvin Ailey’s “Cry” at New York City Center in 1975. “Cry,” an immediate hit, made her a star.Jack Vartoogian/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesAt 5-foot-10, Ms. Jamison was unusually tall for a woman in her profession. “But anyone who’s seen her onstage is convinced she’s six feet five,” the critic Deborah Jowitt wrote in The New York Times in 1976.“I was the antithesis of the small-boned, demure dancer with a classically feminine shape.” Ms. Jamison (pronounced JAM-ih-son) wrote in her 1993 autobiography, “Dancing Spirit.”It wasn’t just her size and shape that were distinctive, however. She was a performer of great intelligence, warmth and wit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Turmoil, Royal Danish Ballet Taps Veteran Dancer as Leader

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      Amy Watson will helm the storied company as it grapples with the sudden departure of its previous artistic director and accusations of abuse at its school.For months, the Royal Danish Ballet, one of the world’s premier dance troupes, has been in turmoil. Accusations of abuse have shaken its 253-year-old school. Then, last week, the company said its star artistic director, Nikolaj Hübbe, was abruptly resigning after 16 years.Now the Royal Danish Ballet hopes to turn the page on those troubles. The company announced on Thursday that Amy Watson, a California-born dancer who joined the troupe in 2000, would serve as its next artistic director.“This theater gave me a second homeland and a wonderful career that I could have never dreamed of,” said Watson, 43. “I want to serve in the highest capacity for the theater and to give back.”Watson, whose tenure begins on Friday, succeeds Hübbe, 57, a Copenhagen native who has been a fixture at the troupe for years. He started training at its school when he was 10 and was a principal dancer by age 20. He later was an acclaimed principal dancer at New York City Ballet for 16 years.Since 2008, Hübbe has run the company, famous for its rich choreographic legacy rooted in the repertory of the 19th-century Danish master August Bournonville. Hübbe oversaw new productions of classics like “Swan Lake” and “Giselle,” and expanded the company’s range, bringing in works by living choreographers, including Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Possokhov and Wayne McGregor. He also worked to attract new audiences with more casual and intimate offerings.During his tenure, the company faced difficulties, including budget cuts, union fights and allegations of drug abuse in the company. Last year, the organization began an inquiry into conditions at its school amid reports that children had experienced psychological and physical abuse. Some former students said they had developed eating disorders after being told at a young age that they were too heavy to dance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Korea’s Modern Dance Scene is Thriving

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      Thanks to government support — and a collaborative spirit among dance companies — the medium is thriving across the country.While the high-octane choreography in K-pop videos has helped define South Korea’s image globally, in the country itself, it’s modern dance that’s in the spotlight. It is a huge part of the country’s arts scene, quietly flourishing and influencing new generations of dancers and choreographers.Its popularity and reach are evident throughout the country, especially among the dozens of companies, in Seoul and other cities, that share dancers, choreographers and designers. And several of those companies are making a name for themselves internationally, performing abroad and inviting major names to choreograph in South Korea.This year’s Seoul International Dance Festival in September was a testament to the country’s dominance in the medium, with companies from Canada, Australia, Europe and, of course, Korea performing over two weeks. And several performances coming up later this fall display the country’s growing visibility on the global dance stage.Some dancers from the Korean National Contemporary Dance Company, which bills itself as the only government-funded national contemporary dance company in Asia, are to perform “Shut Up Womb” (Nov. 15-17), a revival of the 2021 dance by the Japanese choreographer Shimojima Reisa, at the Seoul Arts Center right around the same time some of the company’s other dancers are to perform “Jungle” in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 16-20, as part of a program celebrating South Korean culture.“Jungle” debuted in October 2023 in Seoul, and then traveled to Austria, France, Italy and Kazakhstan this summer. It will return to South Korea in November 2025 in a program that will also include “One Flat Thing, reproduced,” a dance by the celebrated American choreographer William Forsythe.For Kim Sungyong, the new artistic director of the company, this international touring speaks to the success of dance in his home country, and to the access to a variety of well-trained dancers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      From Salzburg to Paris, Dancing Bach’s St. John Passion

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      From Salzburg to Dijon to Paris, a German choreographer adds striking dance to the sacred oratorio.The first thing we hear in Sasha Waltz’s production of the “St. John Passion” (“Johannes-Passion”) is not the mournful opening notes of the sacred oratorio, written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1724, but rather the whir of sewing machines.Eleven dancers bend over a long table as they mechanically stitch together modest frocks. The chorus enters, with lacerating cries of “Herr, unser Herrscher” (“Lord, our Sovereign”), while the dancers slowly carry the billowy white garments that they have just made downstage, their naked bodies bathed in a golden glow. In a recent phone interview, Waltz referred to these frocks as “the shift of life, the cloth that represents, in a way, your own life, from birth to death.”Over the next two hours, the dancers repeatedly don these white gowns, slip into other, colorful garments, or perform in the nude as they bring Bach’s magisterial music to life, their movements enhanced by shimmering nocturnal lighting. For the most part, the set remains bare throughout the performance; the few props include wooden poles, blocks and planks, rope and mirrors.After springtime performances at the Salzburg Easter Festival in Austria and the Opéra de Dijon in France, the production is to arrive at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in early November. Waltz, 61, is perhaps Germany’s best-known living choreographer, and the latest director of many who have been drawn to Bach’s two surviving passions — grand musical settings of the crucifixion of Jesus.“I think it’s very, very theatrical,” Waltz said of the “St. John Passion.” “It’s maybe the oratorio where Bach comes the closest to opera, I would say. And I love the rhythmicality of the turba choirs,” she added, referring to the highly charged crowd scenes.She was speaking days after receiving this year’s German Dance Award. The jury statement praised her “artistically unique and disciplinary-bursting oeuvre,” which has ranged from works staged in museums to operas, such as Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘You’re Basically on a Broadway Stage, With New Friends’

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      At the touring dance party Broadway Rave, the playlist is all show tunes. But don’t worry, no house remixes of “I Dreamed a Dream” here.Julia Cochrane drove for four hours, to New York from Boston, so she could spend last Saturday night immersed in all things Broadway. But not in Manhattan.Instead, she headed to Huntington, Long Island. There, over 100 people packed into Spotlight at the Paramount, a small bar attached to a concert hall, for a touring dance party called Broadway Rave, at which theater kids turned theater adults dance and sing onstage in between shots of tequila.“People who love this, they just want to come together,” said Cochrane, 22, who attended with her friend Hannah Opisso, 23, a Long Island resident who learned about the dance party via Instagram. “It’s like you’re basically on a Broadway stage, with new friends.”“You see these folks get onstage and have the courage to be up there,” said Ethan Maccoby, whose company presents Broadway Rave.Ye Fan for The New York TimesCochrane and Opisso met as students at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, where Broadway cast albums were their pregame music of choice. Last weekend, Broadway musicals brought them together again, and at one point they took the stage to sing “Meet the Plastics” from the “Mean Girls” musical.Attendees don’t have microphones — this isn’t karaoke — but they are encouraged to rush the stage to sing and dance when their favorite songs come on. And the term “rave” is a misnomer: The playlist is mostly uncut cast album material — though last weekend those theater fans may have caught the remix flair at the beginning of “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” Other songs that night included “Out Tonight” (“Rent”), “Popular” (“Wicked”), “Sincerely Me” (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and a few tracks from “Hamilton,” including “The Schuyler Sisters” and “Wait for It.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Keeping the Spirit of Harlem Dance Alive

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      Meet three women who are celebrating, and remixing, Black dance. Every image here of the dancers Ayodele Casel, LaTasha Barnes and Camille Brown is strikingly contemporary. All artists at the cutting edge of dance today, they regularly perform for rapt audiences. But if you were to cast their angled bodies, brilliant smiles and euphoric turns […] More

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      From Here to Eternity, a Choreographer Sinks Into the Sea

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      Faye Driscoll uses the ocean as her collaborator in a sunset dance celebrating the 10th anniversary of Beach Sessions.Faye Driscoll has been spending a lot of time at the ocean, in the ocean, with the ocean — watching it as it stretches into the horizon. What if, she wondered, instead of poisoning and polluting the ocean, we were able crawl inside it? To merge the water in our bodies with the water of the sea?For this summer’s iteration of Beach Sessions, a performance series at Rockaway Beach now in its 10th year, Driscoll was drawn, at first, to the choreography of beachgoers — swimming, lying on the sand, lugging their gear. She was also drawn to the lifeguards, decked out in bright orange. But then her gaze shifted.“What I really sunk into was the sea,” she said in a video interview from Rockaway, where she has lived this summer. “Just daily staring: looking at this vast horizon, this great mystery and feeling the sand and the wind.”“Oceanic Feeling” will be performed at Beach 106 at 6:30 p.m. to make use of the phases of twilight.On morning walks, though, she couldn’t ignore the plastic. “I think climate crisis is on all of our minds,” she said. “It’s not like I came here thinking, I’m going to make a piece addressing that” — and she hasn’t — “but I started thinking, what would it mean to put my body on the altar toward the ocean?”Driscoll, an experimental choreographer, has built a body of work embracing a primal, sensorial side of dance; in last year’s “Weathering,” dancers performed on a rotating platform, like a raft, on which they fought to survive, eventually morphing into a sculpture of flesh. In “Oceanic Feeling,” to be performed Saturday at Beach 106 at Rockaway beginning at 6:30 p.m., the dancers, succumbing to the elements — sand, water, wind — melt into one another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More