Dance Scholar Sydney Skybetter hosts this conversation with Norton Owen, Jacob's Pillow's Director of Preservation. Together they explore the intersections of choreographer Adam Weinert’s work with the history of both Jacob's Pillow and Ted Shawn.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN:Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow Archives. I'm Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, and it's my pleasure to introduce Sydney Skybetter, one of our scholars-in-residence, who will be your host for this exploration of the intersections of choreographer Adam Weinert’s work with the history of both Jacob's Pillow and Ted Shawn.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: It’s been one of the great privileges of my life that Jacob's Pillow has functioned both as a place of professional arrival and return. It was one of the first places that my then dance company performed at almost a decade ago, and it’s continued to be an irreplaceable site for choreographic research. The physical spaces, the community that works in those spaces, they’ve been the scaffolding and the Rolodex of my career in dance as it enters its now second decade. As happens sometimes when folks get older, I've been thinking a lot about history, and about how sometimes the things and the people around you become documented historical record. The other day I was reading this book of dance criticism and I was surprised to see my old friend from grad school, Silas Riener, was the subject of an essay. I was like, Silas—that dude was a goofball! We used to get martinis together back in the East Village before dance history class and holy crap now he’s dance history. Now, I mean, Silas deserves all the accolades he's ever gotten, but it got me thinking about the who, why and how of dance history.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: A big part of my own dance history and chosen dance family are at the Pillow. It is, of course, the oldest dance festival in the country, and it’s steeped in modern dance history. Like, ALL of it. It was founded by Ted Shawn as a sanctuary for the art, and it became one of those places where anybody who was ANYBODY performed. Merce Cunningham. Paul Taylor. Carmen de Lavallade. They all had these super important moments at the Pillow. And I started wondering how Ted Shawn—the acclaimed and supposed "father of American dance"—created an institution that not only supports the American dance tradition, but created one of the most celebrated archives of that history in the world.
I visited the Pillow to speak with their Director of Preservation, Norton Owen, about his work, about Shawn, and about what it means to be live at the teetering point between contemporary dance practice and dance history.
NORTON OWEN: Well, this, I've just completed my 43rd season. And I have not been here all that time as Director of Preservation, but I have been involved with the Archives pretty much all the time that I've been here.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: And how has the archive changed since you first got here?
NORTON OWEN: Well, when I got here, it, the Archives were contained in a tiny little cabin that was not heated or temperature controlled, it was not accessible to anyone. So, it has hugely expanded and become something that is, what I'm happy to say, a really essential part of the Pillow at this point.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: The Pillow archives are one of my favorite places to do research because you’re never quite sure what sort of artifacts you might run into. Their holdings are full of rare objects, documents, costumes, and letters, the literal stuff of history made tangible. I asked Norton if he had a favorite piece from the archive.
NORTON OWEN: Well, you know, there's so much…At the moment. I'm thinking very fondly about the costume collection that we have because over the past several months we've been working with Caroline Hamilton who had been an intern with us in 2017. And then, she came back in, in early 2018 to work with us on cataloging the collection of costumes and then making it accessible through an exhibit at Williams College Museum of Art. So, that exhibit called Dance We Must is something that, while we're speaking now, is still on. But it is the first time that we've really had an opportunity to show costumes, more than just a handful of them at a time. There's 30 in this particular exhibit. Many people, really most of the people who have seen the exhibit come out saying, “I had no idea that you had all these costumes!” And so, there was a certain surprise factor in that of people saying, “Well, where do you keep all of these things?” And, well, they're in Blake's Barn. They have been in the original touring trunks. There are about 30 touring trunks that were used by Denishawn and then by Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers. And the costumes were packed in those trunks and essentially left here. And we, we had inventoried them before, but this is the first time that we were able to really catalog them, and to look at them, and also to re-house all the costumes. So I would say, you know, the costumes are certainly one thing that I think of as a really exciting part of the Archives. But I would say that the chief way that people know about the collection is through the moving images that we have, and that certainly a big part of what we share in the Reading Room in Blake's Barn are the films. And, and in a way it's really germane to what's going on here right now with the reconstruction of Shawn’s Dance of the Ages which Adam Weinert is doing.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: I recorded this interview while visiting the Pillow to give a lecture alongside choreographer Adam Weinert’s re-mounting of the Dance of the Ages, which Shawn premiered at the Pillow in 1938. Weinert and his team worked closely with Norton and the Pillow to reconstruct the dance from photo and video documentation.
NORTON OWEN: A really essential piece of making that possible is the documentation that was created of the piece. And this started in the late 30s, the work was made in 1938. And somewhere around that time, we're actually not entirely sure whether it was, would have been probably the summer of ‘39, most likely summer of ‘39, that it was filmed. But it was black and white silent film, so that's the way it was preserved for decades. And in the 1980s, when Jess Meeker, who had been Ted Shawn’s composer and accompanist all during the years of the Men Dancers, Jess was still here in the 1980s and well, and well into the 90s, he died in 1997. And Jess would come to Jacob's Pillow every summer to accompany classes, sometimes to play for performances, and we knew about these films that, that had been made, but they were silent films. And I asked Jess whether he had the music for them and he said, “Well, no.” There was, there had been a fire at some point in time. So, many of the scores for the pieces that he wrote didn't make it. But we knew that in order to, you know, the next question was, “Well, do you remember your music?” and, and yeah, he had a pretty good idea. You know, he had played it, you know, countless times and he knew the way the movement was supposed to go with the music. So, we had a project, we had several projects that were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. They used to have a program called Dance/Film/Video, and we got funding to, to transfer the films to video tape where we had a lot more flexibility once we had transferred them to video. And then Jess would play to the image. And, you know, there was a real advantage here that Jess had trained in his early years, he was born in 1912, I believe, so he was coming of age, as a teenager he was playing for silent films. And so, this skill of being able to play to a fixed image, you know, a moving image but one that is not going to change, it's not going to change its speed for, if you're speeding up or not. So, the idea of being able to, you know, which is a real skill to be able to fit your playing to, to that moving image, he had that skill. So he was able to recreate his scores and we recorded them and synchronized them with the films. So, that is what his, you know, that film that exists of Dance of the Ages, and there are a number of others. There's Kinetic Molpai, there’s Labor Symphony, there's a whole slew of other films that have been made. But having that film documentation with the music that shows you how the music is supposed to go to the movement was an essential piece that made it possible for Adam Weinert to recreate Dance of the Ages.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Ted Shawn wrote extensively about his dance practice and he went to great lengths to preserve archival material as it was generated.
NORTON OWEN: I never knew Ted Shawn. I came here in 1976 and Shawn had died in ‘72, so I don't have the benefit of having talked to him about this. But what I certainly know from the evidence that I have, is that he cared very much about documentation. He made sure that performances were recorded in any way that they could be at the time, which during most of his time here was on black and white silent film. There were some, some of his curtain speeches that were recorded on audio tape, but aside from those kinds of things, just all kinds of other ways that he made sure that dances were photographed, he wrote about things, he saved things. And then I think most tellingly, he used to, every, at the end of every season, they would make up something called Archives Packets. And they would be a set of programs from the summer, some photographs, I believe, posters, other written materials of all kinds, their brochure from the summer and so forth. And he would wrap all of these things up in brown paper, we still have some of them, wrap them up in brown paper and tie them with a string, and they would be mailed to major dance repositories around the country. So, you know, he was seeding all of these places, making sure that they knew what was going on at Jacob's Pillow. And, you know, I think that's a remarkable testament and it certainly says a lot about what he was actively doing. You know, he wasn't waiting for somebody else to come along and do it. He was figuring out, you know, what he could do to make sure that there was some record.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: For those of you who haven’t been here, Jacob’s Pillow is this beautiful, Arcadian space nestled between mountains in the middle of a forest wilderness. It was, for many years, a kind of dance commune, where Shawn and his collaborators lived, farmed, and made dances together. I asked Norton if this was a kind of Utopian gesture—an attempt to compose, in Massachusetts, a dance future that hadn’t fully arrived yet.
NORTON OWEN: Shawn definitely had a Utopian sense about what might be possible in dance. I mean, look, he created Jacob's Pillow and that certainly speaks to his vision for making a place where dance would be the central element. And I think that, beyond this place, I mean, it was a belief that he had, I think, going back to Denishawn. And, you know, to read over some of the institutional language that he developed with the Denishawn Company, clearly it was already then his idea to make, you know, a special environment. You know, he wrote in, there was a book, a 1925 book called The American Ballet, and he put a lot of his ideas into that about what he envisioned for the future. And a lot of it had to do with making a school that would be outside of a major metropolis that would have a lot of the characteristics that you can see we're taking, that happened here. But among those characteristics, you know, not only would it be, you know, in the country where there would be lots of good fresh food available, where there would be nature around, all around and all those kinds of things, but another thing that he talked about was that there would be a dance library. And that he envisioned that in this dance library, not only would there be books, but there would be motion pictures of the great dances so that these would be some of the resources that would be available to people. I don't think he envisioned that that was to everybody, you know, that they would be available to the public, he was more, his, his idea was more that this would be a place where people would go as a school, you know, or, or a retreat and that it would be, you know, somewhat limited in scope in that way. But I think, one of the wonderful things if you've got a vision that is sufficiently broad and sufficiently forward-looking, I mean, I think a lot of what we do here still can be traced to Shawn's foundations and to the things that he put in place, and that he began. I mean, it wouldn't be, even though I’ve talked about what, what we did in the 1980s with the films and getting Jess Meeker to put his score to them, it wouldn't have been possible to do that if the films hadn’t first existed. So, you know, all of the foundational work that Ted Shawn did, in terms of making it possible for later generations to do what I hope we are doing now.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Ted Shawn intended to become a minister before he decided to become a modern dancer. This shift has always made sense to me—both professions are preoccupied with performance and ritual, and with the generating and reading of arcane signs. It’s long struck me that Jacob’s Pillow— named for the biblical Jacob—was structured around, or maybe haunted by, Shawn’s faith.
NORTON OWEN: I think that Ted Shawn never really lost his desire to be a minister in a sense, and that, that he, he certainly believed in dance as, as something that was elemental to, to human beings. And that was, that was sacred in a certain way, and that, that he wanted very, on a very deep level to proclaim that Gospel to anybody and everybody who would listen. So I think that, that he shifted his focus maybe after abandoning his plans to study for the ministry and deciding instead to be a dancer. But I think all of these strains were with him from a very early age. I mean, even from when he was a child, one of the things he was recorded to say, one of those funny sayings that your parents write down, was that he wanted to be an actor, except on Sundays when he wanted to be a minister. You know, so, you know, the idea of these two different things, you know, being a part of, part of him, I think was something that came from very early on and I think that he carried with him for the rest of his life. Wanting to make sure that it wasn't just the way he was going to live his life but that he wanted to share that with other people and to evangelize a bit.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: The research process for Adam Weinert’s recreation of Dance of the Ages was extensive and unconventional. He and several of his dancers spent time working on a farm doing field work, and there was generally an effort to re-live the exertions of the dancers who worked with Shawn as the piece came together.
NORTON OWEN: The Men Dancers’ life here at Jacob's Pillow was fully, you know, intertwined in terms of the work-life balance. There was no work-life balance, it was all…their life was all work in a sense. Different kinds of work, but if they weren't working in the studio, then they were working on raising their food, or building their cabins, or doing the other maintenance work that had to be done here. There were no paid workers. They were it. So that, that it was really essential for making a kind of commune in a sense, and I think that, I think that Adam has been very interested in that aspect of what Shawn did. I think it's a…I think it's a fascinating chapter for many reasons, one of which is that, that it's difficult to say how much of what Shawn did in the 1930s was based on his philosophy and how much of it was based on sheer necessity. You know, this was the Great Depression—it's all well and good to say that he wanted his dancers to be familiar with work of the fields and with building and all of this manual labor, so that he could make that movement into art in the studio. That is a wonderful philosophy. But, the question remains in my mind, well if they didn't do it, who else was going to do it? So, you know, if there really wasn't a… if there was no choice that like “OK, you're gonna have to build your own cabins and, and grow your own food,” how much more wonderful is it that you do that within this overarching philosophy of “the reason we are doing this is to create work that we're going to then go into the studio and have a chance to explore.” You know, it's brilliant in terms of having something that is, is seamlessly knit together to make a life and…
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Well it sounds like gospel.
NORTON OWEN: Yeah, it really is.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Before I spoke with Norton, I ran into Adam, who told me that while in residence at the Pillow and feeling a bit stressed about rehearsal, he saw what he believed to be the ghost of Ted Shawn in a tree. Now I’m not sure how literally Adam intended that comment, but Norton, for one, takes seriously the notion that inspiration can come from unexpected places.
NORTON OWEN: I think, I would say that there is no way that you can be here at Jacob’s Pillow and not feel in some, on some level the presence of our founder, Ted Shawn. It’s very, very much in everything here. And of course knowing how happenstance in some ways parts of, parts of it were, you know, the fact that he came to this particular place to bring his dreams to. And the fact that that it was so difficult for him, if not impossible, to get out of it. I mean there, you know, there was a time after the Men Dancers disbanded that he would have been fine to be, like, “OK, well I'm done with this, moving on to something else,” but he couldn't sell the place. And so, you know, a lot of then what later transpired certainly the, the true beginnings of the Festival as we know it today, the building of the Ted Shawn Theatre and expansion came about really because he didn't feel like he could do anything else. He couldn't sell the place, so he had to make a go of it, and the only way to make a go of it would be to, to get into it bigger. You know, to like, “OK, well, we can't really make this engine work running out of the studio, we have to build a theater.”
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Throughout his lifetime, Shawn aimed to build bridges between dance and performers and the public. And one of the simple but lastingly effective ways he did that was to serve tea and sandwiches to foster relationships between dancers and patrons. Adam did the same for his re-creation of Dance of the Ages.
NORTON OWEN: The idea of the tea lecture demonstrations came about very informally. It was, again, somewhat out of necessity because Shawn needed a way of, you know, they needed grocery money, and, and he was friendly with the head of the Berkshire Playhouse at the time—Cowles Strickland was his name. And his suggestion to Shawn was that, “You know, you could open up the studio, you know, bring, let people come in and see what you're doing here, it's so interesting.” And so it was really kind of a, a very informal thing in the beginning, and I guess the idea was “Well we can't just do a performance or just dance for them, it seemed like, you know, you're going to drag them all the way out here to Becket, we should give them something,” you know. So the idea of tea and sandwiches, I think, was just to sort of round out the, the afternoon just to make it seem like we were being hospitable. And, and I don't, you know, there's not a whole lot of documentation about like, what kind of tea or what kind of sandwiches there were, and I, I think it's not really so much the point it wasn't the, it wasn't that people came from miles around to taste those incredible sandwiches!
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: No "We had a Shawn grilled cheese, those things are phenomenal!"
NORTON OWEN: You know, I think it was really just a mechanism to have a little social time to, you know, really to, to help introduce the audience to the whole idea of, I mean, dance, modern dance in 1933 was not exactly something that was on everybody's list of, “Oh, yeah, I want to see that.” And so, you know, I think there was an element of, well, you know, this makes it a better, a better sell. If people know that for their 75 cents, or a dollar, or whatever it was that they would get a little bit of dancing, a little bit of talking, and, and a little bit of refreshments out of it.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: At the opening of Weinert’s Dance of the Ages, one of the daughters of Joseph Franz, the architect of the Ted Shawn Theatre, started a conversation with us. She had been at the premiere of the original Dance of the Ages, and told us what she remembered, what she liked more in the old version or the new. And in the spirit of Shawn’s modern dance hospitality, she also told us about a drink that the Men Dancers served at some of their after parties. An improvised concoction that apparently started as something resembling a Manhattan, but then you kept adding alcohol until you ran out. The afterparties at the Pillow these days are a little more conservative, but the spirit of conviviality and deep-seated drive to share the dance remain.
NORTON OWEN: I think that, that like many things, you have to just do it, put it out there and, and then the next steps will be taken by the universe.
[Closing music comes in, composed and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN:That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob's Pillow, we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, and of course through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or onsite.