Inside the Pillow Lab: Faye Driscoll

Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. “Being in a place, being in an era, for instance an era of mass extinction, is intrinsically uncanny. We haven’t been paying much attention.” —Timothy Morton, All Art is Ecological Faye Driscoll’s newest work, "Weathering" is a multi-sensory flesh sculpture made of bodies, sounds, scents, liquids, and objects. Ten people (dancers/singers/crew) enact a glacially morphing tableau vivant on a mobile raft-like stage surging through the Anthropocene. Their voices generate a score that crescendos and resonates as they clutch, careen, and cleave in a space too small to contain them, spilling off the edges. The audience embanks the performers, close enough to smell the sweat and feel the steam of the central, spiraling scenes. The symphonically active, luminously living work is a breathing, leaking choreography of micro events within a momentum thrusting from just beyond the perceivable. Driscoll and her team of collaborators ask: How do we feel the impact of events moving through us which are so much larger, yet are animating and activating our bodies all the time? How do we get closer to the impact? Can we slow down enough to feel the dust, hurt, howl, absence, spill, plume? INSIDE THE PILLOW LAB Faye Driscoll RESIDENCY DATES: December 5-18, 2022 CREATIVE TEAM Creator: Faye Driscoll Performers: James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Jo Warren Scenic Design: Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan Vocal Design: Sophia Brous Lighting Design: Amanda Ringger Sound Design: Ryan Gamblin Dramaturgy: Dages Juvelier Keates Choreographic Assistant: Amy Gernux Intimacy Coordination: Yehuda Duenyas Production Stage Management: Emily Vizina New York Live Arts Producer: Hannah Emerson Jernigan FILMING: Erica Spizz NEL SHELBY PRODUCTIONS Nel Shelby, Producer Ashli Bickford, Editor Benjamin Richards, Graphic Animation Sonia Bartolomeo "Weathering" is commissioned and produced by New York Live Arts as part of the Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist Program, which is made possible with lead funding from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and has been named for lead donors Jon Stryker and New York Live Arts board Vice-chair Slobodan Randjelović; and co-commissioned by Theater der Welt and The Joyce Theater Foundation’s Artist Residency Center, made possible by lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional commissioning support provided by Wexner Center for the Arts and members of Faye Driscoll’s Commissioners Circle. The work is made possible with generous support from New York State Council on the Arts, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and developed with residency support from Carolina Performing Arts at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, the Pillow Lab at Jacob’s Pillow, and Dancers’ Workshop. The 2022-2023 PILLOW LAB RECEIVES LEADERSHIP SUPPORT FROM: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation © 2022 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Inc.