‘John Lindquist: As of Today’ at Jacob’s Pillow Makes the Past Present

About two and a half hours northeast of New York City, atop a mountain in the Berkshires, lies Jacob’s Pillow. And on the grounds of this rustic family farm turned international dance festival, in an 18th-century barn gifted from a Hollywood dancer, hang over seventy photographs. In one, Black American modern dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey sways back into a jazzy hinge. A few feet away, German neo-expressionist dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch boldly peaks up at her partner. Across the room, French-American ballet dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq gazes down over her elegantly crossed hands.

“One of the remarkable things about this exhibition is the images are all color,” Norton Owen, curator of “John Lindquist: As of Today” and the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, told me upon my arrival in Becket, Massachusetts. That may not sound remarkable but remember that the photographs included in the exhibit date from the 1930s to the 1970s. Ailey swayed back in 1959, Bausch peaked up in 1968 and Le Clercq gazed down in 1951. And yet when you stand before these photographs, they look as if they could have been taken yesterday. Even though most of the dance artists in the photographs are no longer with us, they feel present, alive and well, in Blake’s Barn.

 

This incredible time-warp is possible thanks to a series of fortunate events. First, John Lindquist, who was born in 1890, used Kodachrome film—a very stable color film—during his time as the Pillow’s staff photographer, from 1938 until his death in 1980. Second, Lindquist’s protégé Stephen Driscoll donated Lindquist’s 35mm Kodachrome slides (over 13,000 in all, as well as 7,500 black and white photographs, 2,800 contact sheets and negatives and 16mm film) to the Harvard Theatre Collection at the university’s Houghton Library. Then the Houghton Library decided to digitize thousands of the images in The John Lindquist Collection to make them available to the public. And finally, Owen—who first met Lindquist and Driscoll in 1976 when he was a student at the Pillow—was motivated to scroll through thousands of those digitized images.

Like this exhibit, Jacob’s Pillow has always been a collaboration, a coming together of the right people at the right time. In 1931, dancer-choreographer Ted Shawn bought the farm as an artist retreat. He started offering performances with his newly-formed company, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, in 1933. When many of the dancers had to join the armed forces in 1940, Shawn disbanded the company and fell deeply in debt. Many came to his and the Pillow’s aid, and a committee made up of dancers and local enthusiasts raised enough money to buy the property from Shawn and build the first theater in America designed specifically for dance. Since then, the country’s longest-running international dance festival has flourished, and in 2003, the site was named a National Historic Landmark for its importance in America’s culture and history.

Lindquist was a 48-year-old cashier at Filene’s department store and an amateur photographer when he first discovered the Pillow. He was driving with friends on Route 20 from Tanglewood back to Boston when he saw a sign for a performance of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. According to the documentary John Lindquist Photographer of the Dance from 1980, Lindquist pointed at the sign and said, “Take me there!” He took a few photos during that show, developed them and showed them to Shawn, who appointed Lindquist the Pillow’s first official photographer. Lindquist spent forty-two summers at the Pillow, photographing thousands of the world’s most famous and innovative dance artists.

This isn’t the first exhibit of Lindquist’s work that Owen has curated. In 1997, to celebrate the festival’s 65th anniversary, he assembled a retrospective, picking one photograph for every summer Lindquist was there. This time, Owen wanted to do things differently—specifically, he didn’t want to worry about chronology or fame. This time, the quality of the image itself was more important than who was in it. Don’t get me wrong, the walls of Blake’s Barn are star-studded. You can see the greats in all their glory, but you will also come across names and faces you’ve never seen before. “I wanted viewers to find people they’ve never heard of,” Owen said. “Who didn’t make it into the history books, and see that they still left a mark here.”

One of my favorite photos in the exhibit falls into that category. It is untitled, simply captioned Charles Tate, 1941. I didn’t recognize the name and couldn’t find out much about this dancer except that he performed in Radha with Ruth St. Denis (Ted Shawn’s ex-wife), but the image is exquisite: a man hovering over the very rock that gave the Pillow its name, arms outstretched and head thrown back, feet crossed and chest wide open. Another photograph that stands out more for its composition than its subject is Portrait of a Ballerina, featuring Mia Slavenska, the Croatian-American soloist of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, doing a pas de chat in a long tutu in 1952. The image is uncanny because the dancer’s legs are tucked up beneath her, so she appears to be floating mid-air, legless against a cornflower blue sky.

It should be noted that most of the photographs in the exhibit are set outside. Lindquist preferred the bright sunlight for his posed photo shoots, and Owen decided to narrow his selections to those taken outdoors, as they would be less grainy than the ones taken in the darkened theater.

Several photos stand out for their use of color which, as Owen pointed out, makes them not only vibrant but “remarkably present.” Todd Bolender’s At the Still Point is striking because of Emily Frankel’s orange dress which, in the video footage of the 1955 performance available on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, appears white. Owen shared that even those who know the dance well and have performed it since have been amazed by this detail. The rosy hue of dancer Grant Mouradoff’s costume in Michel Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose, taken in 1943, is stunning, as is the multi-colored skirt worn by Tina Ramirez, founder of Ballet Hispánico, in 1948 and the buttercup yellow of ballroom dancer Vanya’s dress in 1952.

All the photos in the exhibit are prints from the newly digitized archives save one, a color print from Driscoll’s private collection: “Air Section” from Dance of the Ages featuring Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers in 1938. It is worth viewing not only because it is a beautiful photo with great historical importance but also because it is enlightening to compare the quality of its color with the newer prints.

As for the exhibit’s layout, while chronological, it is incredibly choreographed. One wall features male solos, another female solos, another trios and ensembles and the last duets. In one corner, looping video footage relates to the photographs, and displays about seventy more images. In this way, the walls and images speak to each other, interacting. “One might see an individual photo differently because of its neighbors,” Owen explained. “Because of its context.”

The response to the exhibit so far has been outstanding, and Owen is pleased that it has appealed to so many, even those who don’t consider themselves “dance people.” He said, “That’s part of what we aim to do with an exhibition, to welcome more people in. So that they say, ‘Wow, that’s really interesting. I’d love to see more.’ Or to somehow open up something for them or give them a point of connection. And these images do that. There are so many connection points. When ten people come in, they connect to ten different images, and that, to me, is a sign of success.”

“John Lindquist: As of Today” closes on August 25 but will be viewable by appointment through the winter.