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I am Norton Owen, Director of Preservation for Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. I want
to introduce you to a site that has great importance for us because it's the place on
our grounds that gave the festival its name - the rock known as 'Jacob's Pillow'.
The story goes back to the late 18th century when this property was first established as
a family farm, close to the main stagecoach route between Boston and Albany, the road
now known as Route 20. This was a winding dirt road that had multiple switchbacks in
order to climb the steep Berkshire hills. The zig-zag roadway resembled a ladder from
a distance, and early settlers were reminded of the bible story in Genesis where Jacob
dreams of a ladder to heaven. And so the road came to be known as Jacob's Ladder, and the
Carter family thought that this pillow-shaped boulder next to their farmhouse must therefore
be Jacob's Pillow. The biblical references didn't stop there, as a nearby soda fountain
and gas station was known as Jacob's Dream, and a neighboring farm was named Beth-El (the
term used in Genesis for the place where Jacob slept). When Pillow founder Ted Shawn first
came here in 1930, he found a piece of letterhead in the house that read, "Jacob's Pillow -
A Mountain Farm", and he adopted the name right away.
The biblical story of Jacob has long captured the imagination of visual artists, and some
of that imagery has been used here in various ways. Beginning with the first season in the
Ted Shawn Theatre, the printed programs were decorated with a line drawing by illustrator
Major Felten, envisioning Jacob and an unusually muscular angel descending from heaven. A 1960
program featured artwork by the contemporary choreographer and artist Remy Charlip, based
on mosaics that Shawn photographed in Sicily. And a 1960 program featured a watercolor by
the Romantic era's great William Blake.
On the stage, the Jacob connection was first made by Shawn in 1949, when Shawn choreographed
a dance he called The Dreams of Jacob, with a commissioned score by the famous French
composer Darius Milhaud. There were only four performances of this dance, but the work has
survived on film and in photos, including some particularly evocative shots of the angels
going up and down the ladder.
In more recent years, choreographer Liz Lerman used the story of Jacob for her Hallelujah
project, bringing the eminent biblical scholar Rabbi Lawrence Kushner here to explore the
meaning of the original scripture, and incorporating this exploration into the stage work.
The rock itself was used by Ann Carlson as the backdrop for one of the tableaux vivantes
in her work Night Light. A photo from the 1940s showing teacher Steffi Nossen and a
group of female dancers was recreated as the final section of Carlson's site-specific work
in 2001.
During Shawn's lifetime, students in The School at Jacob's Pillow learned a classroom dance
that he had created to the traditional spiritual, We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder.
The Pillow Rock has been a focal point since the very beginning, with one of our earliest
images showing a picnic with Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers in 1935, right after they
got back from a successful tour to London. In 1982, the Men gathered at the same site
when they came here to celebrate the Pillow's 50th anniversary. Many other important moments
have been commemorated at the Pillow Rock, including the U.S. debuts of the Royal Danish
Ballet in 1955, Indrani in 1960, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 1964. Each company that
comes to the Pillow to this day, get's its picture taken on the rock.
Another reason this is a particularly meaningful spot is that Ted Shawn's ashes were buried
here after his death in 1972, so the famous photo of him reclining on the rock is an especially
poignant one in that this is, in fact, his final resting place. When Shawn's lead dancer
Barton Mumaw died in 2001, he asked that his ashes also be buried here, and the famous
weathervane image of Mumaw was engraved into an adjoining rock, which I like to call the
"throw pillow".
Each week during the festival, this is the place where the entire Pillow community gathers
to participate in an official welcome and prepares for the week ahead. Very much like
the entire institution, this particular place represents a coming together of past, present,
and future.