Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Announces 10 Weeks of Summer Performance

Jacob’s Pillow 2026 Festival Guide

June 24–August 30 | Becket, Massachusetts

Urban Bush Women perform SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar. Photo by Stephanie Berger.

In its 94th season, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival returns to a full 10-week summer of programming, June 24 through August 30. The structure is familiar: world class engagements in the Ted Shawn Theatre and the the still new Doris Duke Theatre, daily outdoor performances on the Henry J. Leir Stage, and a campus that operates as venue, laboratory, and alter for the art of movement.

This summer is stacked with important moments. San Francisco Ballet makes its first Pillow appearance since 1956, returning to the site of its East Coast debut after a 70-year absence. Martha Graham Dance Company arrives in the midst of its 100th anniversary season, anchoring a program that situates Graham’s work, Night Journey (1947), Immediate Tragedy (1937), within a larger conversation about democracy, dissent, and women’s leadership. And Akram Khan Company brings Thikra: Night of Remembering, its final touring production before the company concludes its 25-year run in 2027.

At the Ted Shawn Theatre, audiences can witness the feats of the Paul Taylor Dance Company to the theatrical charge of Urban Bush Women, whose dance-driven musical SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar unfolds in a fictional jazz club with a live score. A.I.M by Kyle Abraham presents the U.S. premiere of White Space, a 12-dancer work developed in part through the Pillow Lab, with live pianists Jason Moran and Nico Muhly and visual art by Glenn Ligon. 

Circa Contemporary Circus returns with Wolf, a physically exacting contemporary circus work that oscillates between chaos and grace. Ballet Hispánicobrings a mixed repertory including Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Linea Recta, originally commissioned by the Pillow, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago closes the season with works by Aszure Barton, Gwen Verdon, and Bob Fosse.

San Francisco Ballet arives under the artistic director Tamara Rojo. the company performs both indoors and outdoors in the same week—classical repertory alongside works by George Balanchine, Hans van Manen, Rojo, and Ben Stevenson.

Opening last year during a season truncated by sad circumstance, The technologically cutting edge Doris Duke Theatre is ready to show audiences what it can really do this year. Shamel Pittsand and his collective TRIBE bring Touch of RED, staged in the round. Set inside a stylized boxing ring and drawing from Lindy Hop, boxing footwork, and nightlife culture, the duet interrogates how Black men are perceived and how they perceive themselves. Pitts will receive the biennial Jacob’s Pillow Men Dancers Award during the Festival.

The new age of technologically augmented dance advances at the Duke's futuristic facility. Ilya Vidrin’s Proxies outfits dancers with custom sensors that translate physical contact into live sound, probing the limits of what data can register about intimacy and care. Brian Brooks’ Elsewhere uses motion capture and generative graphics to create a live dialogue between bodies and digital systems, while also revisiting Closing Distance, set to Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Partita for Eight Voices.

Taiwanese choreographer Huang Yi presents Ink, pairing dancers with industrial robots and holographic projection in a kinetic display of calligraphic abstraction.

Other Duke highlights foreground music: Ephrat Asherie collaborates with Arturo O’Farrill in Shadow Cities, grounding breaking, house, and waacking in live jazz; tap artist Brinae Ali’s Baby Laurence Legacy Project restores the legacy of Baltimore innovator “Baby” Laurence through live performance and archival presence; and Faye Driscoll’s Weathering transforms the theatre into a slow-moving, multi-sensory landscape of bodies.

The outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage remains the Festival’s daily heartbeat. See flamenco from Compañía Nélida Tirado; Bharatanatyam from Anubhava Dance Company; Jingle Dance from Acosia Red Elk; hula from Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima; bomba from the Puerto Rican ensemble Kalindá; and Chicago footwork from The Era Footwork Collective.

Street and club forms are strongly represented too. Kia the Key & Company, led by Shakia “The Key” Barron, explores Black social dance as cultural memory and resistance, while Ogemdi Ude’s MAJOR reframes majorette dance as a site of Black femme lineage and physical memory. Benjamin Akio Kimitch’s Tiger Hands channels Chinese dance and Peking opera traditions into a contemporary meditation on inheritance and loss.

Throughout, the Pillow’s identity as both presenter and incubator remains visible. Several works this season were developed through the Pillow Lab residency program, now in its ninth year.

For complete dates, program details, and ticket information, visit jacobspillow.org.