What makes the site so addictive is that the performances are expertly edited, with close-in camera work, and each is accompanied by a pithy biographical write-up. Norton Owen, the Pillow’s director of preservation, says he and his staff did not want “simply to dump stuff online.”
“We were trying to put ourselves in the shoes — or the desk chair — of people looking online,” says Owen. “Would people really want to look at an entire dance by Mark Morris or Paul Taylor, or do they just want a hint of something that intrigues them? I think it’s the latter. And if you say, ‘I think that’s wonderful and I want to see the whole thing,’ well, maybe you should go to the theater.”
The archive is not yet an exhaustive chronicle of Pillow performances. It includes excerpts from two or three works per year, going back to a 1937 clip of Pillow founder Ted Shawn, with his all-male group, shirtless and in wonderfully billowing pants. But for 2010 and this past summer, there’s a snippet from each of the 20 troupes who performed.
“I’m pretty picky,” says Owen. “I want to have things that are satisfying, so there’s a sense of beginning, middle and end.” That’s not easy in 90 seconds, but the result is singularly handsome — and rare. Especially valuable is a fragment of a 1942 performance by Anna Duncan, one of Isadora Duncan’s adopted daughters and disciples known as “Isadorables.” No authenticated footage of Isadora Duncan herself exists, so these few seconds, filmed in color against the open doors of the Ted Shawn Theatre with the surrounding trees in full foliage, are a precious link to the modern-dance pioneer.
Owen’s staff aims to add one new excerpt a week, digging into the far past as well as scouring recent seasons. The greater goal, he says, is to whet appetites for live dance performances.
