Stephen Petronio established the Bloodlines(future) Award to support the research and development of works by early career movement-based artists particularly in the lineage of postmodern and experimental dance.
Petronio Projects
After 40 years of invention, collaboration, performing, touring, teaching, and community building, the Stephen Petronio Company closes its doors in 2026. Through the newly formed Petronio Projects, Stephen Petronio continues his creative practice—developing new choreographic projects, re-staging archival Stephen Petronio Company repertory, and offering mentorship, strategic planning, placemaking/ dance residency building, as well as lectures and guidance on all things dance related.
Remarks by Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director, Jacob’s Pillow
July 23, 2025
“This is a truly historic engagement. Stephen Petronio studied dance and science at Hampshire College just about an hour from here and he probably never could have imagined that he would become one of this country’s most renowned choreographers and be celebrating his 40th Anniversary here at Jacob’s Pillow in 2025. Stephen came to the Pillow for the first time in 1980, when he performed on this very stage as the first male dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company. His own company had its Pillow debut five years later on our outdoor stage, the year of the company’s founding and returned several times between 1985 and 2003, and we did a co-presentation with MassMoCA in 2010.
So this is a long-awaited homecoming and we’re delighted and honored to host an engagement that marks both the company’s four decades of extraordinary work as well as the Petronio Company’s final performances. It’s an extraordinary achievement to have a dance company for forty years in this country, so if you are a current or past dancer, designer, staff member, manager, board member, presenter or funder of the Stephen Petronio Company, please stand and be recognized for the role that you played in sustaining this company for 40 years.
Stephen has worked with us to curate a truly thrilling retrospective program that shows the range of the company’s work and highlights his focus on, in his words: “making movement that confounds and attracts us.” The earliest Petronio work on the program is MiddleSexGorge created in 1990…the work’s in-your-face-sensuality, intricate and complex composition and extraordinary athleticism required by the dancers made people sit up. We’re excited that the program also features Stephen’s most recent composition that premiered last year…a solo he created for himself, entitled Another Kind of Steve. We also asked that this program include a work from the company’s Bloodlines project designed to honor and embody a lineage of American postmodern dance icons, including Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer, whose work “Chair-Pillow” is from 1969 and is on view this evening. The Bloodlines project has been such a gift to a generation of dance enthusiasts who didn’t see these works when they were presented originally.
It’s important that in addition to the four decades of dancing that we celebrate this week, we celebrate the Petronio residency center in Greene County, New York that assisted over 100 artists in creating new works; the Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top that will live on in perpetuity as a wild open space: and the hundreds of Greene County residents who have benefitted from engagement and education programs.
I hope everyone here today will join me to support Stephen’s continued contributions to our world with Petronio Projects. I’d also like to thank Kathryn du Pree and Joseph Marafito for their major underwriting support of this engagement.
And now everyone, please join me in welcoming back to Jacob’s Pillow the Stephen Petronio Company.