thINKingDANCE Competitors

Jacob’s Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, recipient of the National Medal of Arts, and home to America's longest-running international dance festival, celebrating its 86th Festival in 2018. The Pillow announced its transition to becoming a year-round center for dance in June 2017 through a five-year strategic plan titled Vision ‘22. Each Festival includes more than 50 national and international dance companies and over 350 free and ticketed performances, talks, tours, classes, exhibits, events, and community programs. The School at Jacob’s Pillow, is one of the most prestigious professional dance training centers in the U.S. The Pillow also provides professional advancement opportunities across disciplines of arts administration, design, video, and production through seasonal internships and a year-round Administrative Fellows program. With growing community engagement programs, the Pillow serves as a partner and active citizen in its local community. The Pillow’s extensive Archives, open year-round to the public and online at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, chronicle more than a century of dance in photographs, programs, books, costumes, audiotapes, and videos. Notable artists who have created or premiered dances at the Pillow include choreographers Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey, Donald McKayle, Kevin McKenzie, Twyla Tharp, Ralph Lemon, Susan Marshall, Trisha Brown, Ronald K. Brown, Wally Cardona, Andrea Miller, and Trey McIntyre; performed by artists such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Carmen de Lavallade, Mark Morris, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Edward Villella, Rasta Thomas, and hundreds of others. On March 2, 2011, President Barack Obama honored Jacob’s Pillow with a National Medal of Arts, the high est arts award given by the United States Government, making the Pillow the first dance presenting organization to receive this prestigious award.

Steps on Broadway, founded in 1979, is more than just a dance studio. It is an internationally recognized community of artists, committed to the cultivation of individuality and talent, to the joy, the work, the focus, and the abandon of dance. Classes are offered seven days a week at all levels in ballet, jazz, modern, contemporary, tap, theater dance, hip hop, ethnic, and body conditioning. Steps is the true epicenter of New York’s professional dance community. It is home to many of the best and most world-renowned teachers, and a training ground for generations of aspiring and professional dancers. On any given day, one may take class alongside today’s performers and seasoned veterans from concert dance companies, such as New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Paris Opera, Kirov and Royal Ballets, Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Complexions, and Martha Graham, as well as the opera, Broadway, and the commercial dance world. Steps is a celebrated space. It’s a state-of-the-art facility with an old-world ambiance and a steady pulse of passion, energy, and inspiration. It is a cultural hub, an artistic resource, and a cosmopolitan treasure.

ADF presents dance performances, educational opportunities, community/humanities programs, and maintains an international reach.