Documentary celebrates the long history of Jacob’s Pillow as a mecca for dance (photo by Christopher Duggan)
NEVER STAND STILL: DANCING AT JACOB’S PILLOW (Ron Honsa, 2011)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, August 19 & 26 and September 2, $14, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
firstrunfeatures.com
In conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ron Honsa has made Never Stand Still, a documentary that celebrates the long history of the national historic landmark dedicated to the art of movement. Narrated by Bill T. Jones, the seventy-five-minute documentary looks back at the founding of the Pillow, located in Becket, Massachusetts, through exciting archival footage of Ted Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, Shawn’s all-male troupe, and the construction of the first American theater dedicated specifically to dance. Honsa speaks with such legendary dancers and choreographers as Merce Cunningham, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison, Paul Taylor, and Marge Champion, who all discuss the importance of the Pillow as a nurturing creative mecca that continues to bring performers and audiences together from all over the world. “It was a place where people could, quietly or not, think differently and act differently,” Cunningham says in one of his last interviews. Gideon Obarzanek calls the Pillow “one of the few places you can come and really feel and understand the past in order to move into the future.” Honsa focuses on a series of companies and creators as they rehearse and perform at Jacob’s Pillow, including Obarzanek’s Chunky Move, Rasta Thomas and Bad Boy Dance, solo artist Shivantala Shivalingappa, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Jens Rosén and Stockholm 59° North, Nikolaj Hübbe and the Royal Danish Ballet, and Bill Irwin, who pays tribute to the movement skills of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Honsa (The Men Who Danced) gives equal time to the past, present, and future of dance, incorporating classical, modern, contemporary, hip-hop, experimental, ballet, and other styles and genres, playing no favorites. The film is screening for three consecutive Sundays as part of the ongoing Thalia Docs program at Symphony Space, with Honsa participating in a Q&A following the August 19 show.