Associate Archivist Patsy Gay hosts this exploration of Pillow residencies and their value to choreographers and their creative processes. Existing side-by-side, hear the voices and experiences of two choreographers, Trisha Brown and Ephrat Asherie, even though their residencies at the Pillow were 32 years apart.
[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 Patsy Gay, our Associate Archivist, who will be your host for this exploration of Pillow residencies and their value to choreographers and their creative processes.
PATSY GAY: One of the joys of working intimately with Archives is the sublime immediacy of the past. You can see art works and hear voices from twenty years ago right next to art and voices from a week ago. A fertile suspension of time that can generate amazing, impossible conversations across the years. Today, I’m bringing to you one such impossible conversation between Ephrat Asherie, whose words are taken from a PillowTalk in 2018, and Trisha Brown speaking in an interview from 1986. Over thirty years apart, these two artists were both reflecting on residencies they had at Jacob’s Pillow and the impact it had on their work. I bring them together today, because I feel that it is more important than ever to think about the needs of artists and the role of institutions in supporting their work and process.
We’re going to start hearing from Trisha Brown. She was one of the greats of postmodern dance. And to expose my bias, I absolutely adore her work. I am enraptured by her intricate, luscious movement style that radiates out from the bodies of her dancers as they slip in and out of complex, evolving patterns—all with effortless grace.
She, too, was a consummate speaker, even using texts and stories in some of her choreographies. We’re hearing from Brown in a 1986 interview following her company’s month-long residency at the Pillow. Starting with a more impromptu comment about the site of Jacob’s Pillow, which will ground us in this exploration of artist residencies at the Pillow.
TRISHA BROWN: The community here at Jacob’s Pillow, which is very, very special... I’m going to tell you everything now! I grew up in the country and have lived in the city for twenty five or so years. And I’ve been, against my will, turned into an urban type. To come back into the country has really been an extraordinary experience. I walk two and a half miles from my house to the road to be picked up by the dancers for rehearsal. And it’s been such—important to my health and wellbeing to have this experience for thirty days.
PATSY GAY: Now to Ephrat Asherie, one of the most innovative artists working in the dance field today. Again, to expose my bias, I am a huge fan. Asherie’s emotional, rhythmic, multilayered, compositions skillfully and beautifully incorporate a broad range of movement styles from street, club, and social dance forms like hip-hop, house, breakin’, voguing, and more.
Asherie was at the Pillow for a series of residencies in 2017 to develop her work Odeon. And we hear from her during a 2018 PillowTalk. 32 years after Trisha Brown, Asherie was working in a different time of year, in a different studio, with a different kind of company, doing a very different style of dance— yet she was also drawn to the natural serenity of the Berkshires and Jacob’s Pillow.
EPHRAT ASHERIE: It was the most beautiful and serene place to create. I remember actually, really clearly. I know it sounds a little corny. But I was walking to the studio by myself—because I like to go early before the dancers come to kind of get myself situated—and I was like: Oh, this is the sound of snow falling. Oh my gosh. [laughter] I actually felt like I knew what that sounded like. Because it was so quiet. And it sort of really helped me focus to get into a place of like, Oh, we’re here to work. And it felt like the complete opposite of, as you said, of New York City—kind of chaos. Where you’re having to, like, do this [frantic slapping away arm gesture] to get into a place of: now I’m ready to make something or be in a collaborative process. I feel like being here situates you in the optimum conditions to be a creative person.
PATSY GAY: Asherie, as a younger artist working in New York City, cites the power of getting away from the hustle of the city. But also digs in deeper than that.
EPHRAT ASHERIE: I think, among the beautiful things about this residency program is that you have 24/7 access to the space. So, in New York City there’s a pressure, right? You rent space for a limited amount of hours. And you feel the pressure to sort of do something with this amount of time. Which can be helpful sometimes. But can also hinder the creative process.
Meanwhile, here it’s like: OK, I want to work on this idea and I’m going to allow myself the space and the time to play around with this, and to make bad decisions, and to fail, and to not be afraid to change my mind completely without feeling like now I have no more budget left, you know, to pay the dancers or anything like that. So, that in itself right there is a huge gift.
I also think that because we’re so close to the studio there’s a sense of: OK well we can work, and then we can take a break, and we can go eat lunch together, and we can talk about what we did. And so the process is actually continuous. It’s not just in the four walls of the studio: it’s outside, it’s in the walk to the Derby, it’s eating together, and then it’s coming back with a rejuvenated sense of being together to approach the afternoon.
…which is kind of unheard of in New York. Because you’re sort of limited in time and space and then everybody’s busy. You want to do your teaching gig or your other commitments and stuff. And here, the way the Pillow feels, it’s like: Oh, we’re here for one thing and one thing only: to create together and, like, make something that would probably not be able to happen anywhere else, you know?
PATSY GAY: Trisha Brown was at a different point in her career, but she also felt the power of getting out of New York City and retreating to the Pillow, though for her own reasons.
TRISHA BROWN: I have been inundated with people around me on these tours and back in New York City. So, I’ve chosen to...
It’s like I used to use my most private thoughts. My deepest aesthetic, poetic thinking went into the title of my piece or into talking about my work. Now that level of thinking I keep to myself. I’ve completely inverted my relationship to the outside world and am in need of privacy. And this… I feel like the way that the young dancers who are here can know me and can interact with me is through classes, through informances, and through the exhibition of the work in performance. And that’s how it needs to be for me right now. …and that’s been really an incredible benefit for me being here: that I can be quiet, thinking, focused, and not … with all the demands from the outside.
PATSY GAY: Asherie, in her residencies, was deep in the creative process for Odeon, a collaboration with her brother, the jazz pianist Ehud Asherie, set to the reimagined works of Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth. And here she talks about that process of creation.
EPHRAT ASHERIE: For me, these residencies were where I made the bulk of the material, and where I was able to say: OK, I can do this. This is going to be a thing. And I’m going to be into it because I like it already, even though it has a lot of problems. You know… and.. It gave me the sort of, I don’t know, I’m going to use the word “weight” because I don’t have another word. But, it gave me a sense of: OK, there’s meat here. A sense of—I have all this material and now I can just keep structuring it and start understanding, like, how to, like, edit some of this out or how to make space for something else in here.
But really, I would just say, for the lack of a better word, it grounded me in a sense of: I know what this work is—and it’s going to keep surprising me hopefully, cause that’s probably a good sign—but it gave me a sense of: Yeah, I’m on the right track. I, like, feel supported and believed in, which I think for any artist is monumental. It was like: Come on little baby bird, let’s go, we got this. And like, really helped me just feel like the follow through was completely possible. And instilled in me a sense of empowerment to just keep moving forward … with the work.
PATSY GAY: Trisha Brown, thirty-two years earlier and, some might say, at the prime of her career, interestingly also spoke about uncertainty.
TRISHA BROWN: Let me just speak a little bit about my choreographic process, which is, first of all: Creativity cannot be stored in the bank and gotten out when you need it or purchased by the yard down at the local ‘creativity shop.’ It’s um, it’s a mystery. And one has—I have a work regime that tends to produce dance, but it’s reliant on, on, … I think, finally just concentration and good luck.
In my case I’ve, what do I want to say, uh … I have severe, judgmental voices running in my mind most of the time. It takes me a very long time to make—to approve what I’m doing. And that time, the reason it takes that time, is because I have to have the idea; I have to try it out; I have to see how it looks; I have to reflect about it; I have to keep it, or reject it, or re-use it, or whatever is going to happen. It's a hard-working, complicated, and, as I’m describing it, somewhat delicate process.
I think the thing that being here for four weeks, in this very focused environment has provided me is: the time to have an idea; the time to think about my work, the direction of the work, the direction of the piece I’m currently working on.
PATSY GAY: It’s so powerful to hear Brown echo Asherie’s feelings of uncertainty; to learn that they both share a sense of vulnerability about the process of creation; and to hear how residencies can support them in the making of their work. Towards the end of the 1986 interview, Brown clarifies what she, as an artist, needs the most.
TRISHA BROWN: I’ve always thought that if I were a funding agent—a foundation officer—that I would begin with selecting my most favorite choreographers. Right or wrong, I would do that—maybe on august advice from others. And I would interview them and ask them what they need.
In other words, to go to peculiarity, the idiosyncrasies, the individuality of the choreographer, which is, after all, what we promote in modern dance. And ask them: what do you need? Where do you live? How can I foster the most meaningful level—assist at the most meaningful level of your process?
And for me it’s choreography. To have the opportunity to be in one place with my company—who are after all those who articulate my language, and especially this becomes more true as time goes on. And to work in concentration with them. Rather than—well, I’ll leave it there.
PATSY GAY: And I’ll leave you there. Thinking about the artists of our beloved field. Thinking about their needs, which are in some ways so complex and timely, but in other ways are so basic and omnipresent across different individuals, different styles, and different decades: the need for time and space to be together to make something happen. And hopefully we too can be together soon.
[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.