Norton Owen to be Honored with 2025 Dance Award

Jacob’s Pillow has revealed that Norton Owen, its Director of Preservation and a distinguished determine within the dance neighborhood, might be honored with the 2025 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, marking his fiftieth yr with the group. Owen will obtain the award on the Season Opening Gala in Becket on Saturday, June 21.

The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award is introduced annually to an artist of outstanding imaginative and prescient and achievement, and carries a money prize which the artist can use as they select. As a beloved archivist and mentor, and a founding father of the award-winning digital archive platform Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, Owen has curated many years of assets, occasions, and artistic collections for public entry, offering entry factors into the huge Archives at Jacob’s Pillow. He’s a celebrated chief within the dance area internationally, inspiring generations of students and dance fans.

Norton Owen joins a listing of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award honorees that embrace Misty Copeland, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Dormeshia, Ronald Ok. Brown, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Invoice T. Jones, Merce Cunningham, Kyle Abraham, Michelle Dorrance, Camille A. Brown, Liz Lerman, and Faye Driscoll, amongst others. The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award was established in 2007 and is philanthropically supported by an nameless donor.

“Norton is a nationwide treasure,” stated Pamela Tatge, Government and Inventive Director at Jacob’s Pillow. “As the primary and solely Director of Preservation we’ve ever had, he has thought deeply about how one can doc and protect our ephemeral artform and make sure that our Archives are actually accessible to audiences. He was one of many first dance archivists to conceive of how we would present on-line entry to our holdings, and he has skilled and mentored archivists and students from around the globe. On prime of that, he’s a residing encyclopedia of dance.

“Only a few folks maintain such in depth historical past with such care,” Tatge added, “however he’s cherished for his capacity to tailor the data he shares in a means that resonates with every particular person he speaks with. He’s a gifted community-maker, and is actually one of the vital revered folks in our area. It’s actually an honor to acknowledge the important thing function he has performed within the development of Jacob’s PIllow over the previous 50 years.”

Owen expressed his gratitude for receiving this yr’s Dance Award with a nod to his previous. “I by no means imagined that I’d be thought-about for the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, so this comes as a outstanding shock,” he stated. “I couldn’t be extra thrilled. Once we first opened the Archives to the general public in 1996, we had no thought the way it could be acquired. So, to see how this useful resource has been embraced by our guests and artists has been actually gratifying.”

Norton Owen has been related to Jacob’s Pillow since 1976, when he first attended The College on a scholarship at 22 years previous. The function of Director of Preservation was created for him in 1990, and he has since organized what Alastair Macaulay, former chief dance critic of The New York Occasions, has known as “one of many world’s most outstanding dance archives.” The gathering is housed in Blake’s Barn, an 18th-century constructing on the Pillow campus that invitations guests to discover the historical past of Jacob’s Pillow and the artists who’ve contributed to its legacy. Blake’s Barn includes a big exhibition gallery, an outside space for lectures and talks known as Sommerspace, and the Norton Owen Studying Room, the place guests can watch movies, be taught from displays within the everlasting assortment, browse the library, and entry many years of supplies.

“I all the time hope to create significant connections between artists and audiences,” Owen stated, “whether or not that occurs via an exhibition, a chat, a go to to the Archives, or on-line engagement. Essentially the most significant connections happen after we will help the general public really feel the synergy between previous and current, which is on the root of the Pillow expertise.”

The Season Opening Gala on June twenty first will embrace an evening of celebratory performances within the Ted Shawn Theatre, adopted by dinner and dancing. Along with the presentation of the Dance Award, the Gala will characteristic The College at Jacob’s Pillow Modern Ballet Efficiency Ensemble performing a world premiere by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, a efficiency of Talley Beatty’s Mourner’s Bench by New York Metropolis Ballet principal Taylor Stanley, and extra.