Week 9 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival featured FLEXN and Pam Tanowitz Dance Company.

FLEXN made their Pillow debut this year. Their style of dance, Flex, is characterized by pausing, gliding, hat tricks, ‘bone breaking,’ animation, and contortion. Their dancing is very community-driven, and all of the performers have a deeply personal connection to the work.

Pam Tanowitz’s work involves complex spatial patterns and movement derived from ballet and modern dance traditions, and it has been a true delight to work with Pam and capture many of her productions over the years at in New York and the Pillow!! She just won a major Bessie Award, which is a huge honor for dancers and choreographers. We are so excited for her!!

Listen to their Post-Show Talks to see and learn more!

Collaborators Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and Peter Sellars in conversation with Jacob’s Pillow Scholar-in-Residence Nancy Wozny.

“Bone breaking is about breaking down your body and reconstructing yourself and becoming someone that you didn’t know you can be.” Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz in conversation with Jacob’s Pillow Scholar-in-Residence Maura Keefe.

“I try to use [virtuosity] and undercut it at the same time. So there are reasons for them to have a high leg, but it’s not always a high leg… it’s more about showing that we have choices.”

Pam Tanowitz

MORE FLEXN

We were tasked with helping to educate audiences about FLEXN’s style and show before their upcoming performances this season, and it was a really fun project for us, guided by creative input from Jacob’s Pillow’s marketing team. We know video can really boost ticket sales – people want a teaser of what they can expect to see onstage before buying!!

Nel Shelby is Video Producer at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and Owner & Filmmaker for Nel Shelby Productions, her New York City-based company dedicated to dance videography and editing. Nel shares her mission to preserve and promote the art of dance with her husband, Christopher Duggan, a dance and wedding photographer. They collaborate on projects with dance companies of worldwide renown, up-and-coming choreographers, dance educators, dance schools and more. Nel is also the proud Director and Producer of PS DANCE! — a New York Emmy-nominated documentary about dance education in NYC’s public schools.