Jacob’s Pillow Dance 2017 | Creative Dance Portraits with Students of The School

Making creative dance portraits with students of The School at Jacob’s Pillow is a delight.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors with the dancers in the contemporary and ballet programs. The School attracts top students from around the world – the contemporary program alone has dancers representing nine different countries! The School is incredible. They’re incredible. It’s been great getting to know everyone and collaborating with these young dancers.

Working with the students is awesome. They are young, vibrant and willing to experiment and enjoy themselves in our photo shoots. They share great ideas and are more than willing to try out all of my ideas, too.

At first, this summer’s ballet and contemporary students followed my lead, because of my familiarity with the Pillow and knowledge of the locations I often capture creative dance portraits.

Then, once we get comfortable, their artistic ideas start to emerge and the collaboration really comes alive.

All of these photos were made collaboratively. I threw out ideas, they offered ideas, and together we crafted so many beautiful portraits that I’m only sharing maybe a quarter of what we created here!

Brooke Trisolini, the Pillow’s amazing photography intern, made a few photos of the dancers and me while we were making these portraits. These photos are fun for me to see, and she captured great moments. Brooke and I have been collaborating on these photo shoots, and she has also been seeking more opportunities to create creative portraits with the dancers.