Choreographer, dancer, and multimedia artist Jonah Bokaer will open Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s 85th Anniversary Season in the Doris Duke Theatre, June 21-25. This aesthetically-refined, contemporary program includes Bokaer’s newest work, Rules Of The Game, set to an original, first-time-dance score by ten-time Grammy Award winning artist Pharrell Williams, arranged and co-composed by David Campbell, with playful and surprising architectural elements by longtime collaborator and visual artist Daniel Arsham. Celia Wren of The Washington Post calls Bokaer a “daring contemporary choreographer who’s known for interdisciplinary experiments and especially for collapsing the distance between the dance and gallery/museum worlds.”

“Jonah is a masterful choreographer, equally at home in the gallery or museum as he is on the concert stage,” comments Jacob’s Pillow Director Pamela Tatge. “He’s highly skilled in how he thinks about the body moving through space, and how to integrate the visual. Rules Of The Game is the stunning culmination of his collaboration with Daniel Arsham. In Occupant, we’ll have the opportunity to see the brilliance of Jonah, the dancer, which is how the Pillow first came to know him as a student at our School. He was the youngest dancer to ever join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, I wanted audiences to have the opportunity to see him interpret a very different work.”

Rules of The Game. Dancer: Albert Drake. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancer: Szabi Pataki. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Left to Right: James Koroni, Callie Lyons, Sara Procopio, Szabi Pataki, Albert Drake, Laura Gutierrez, James McGinn. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Top: Szabi Pataki. Left to Right: James McGinn, Callie Lyons, Sara Procopio. Bottom: Laura Gutierrez. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Top: James McGinn. Bottom: Albert Drake. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Top: Szabi Pataki. Left to Right: Laura Gutierrez, Sara Procopio, Callie Lyons, James McGinn. Bottom: Albert Drake. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Left to Right: James Koroni, then: Betti Rollo, Szabi Pataki, Albert Drake, Sara Procopio, James McGinn, Laura Gutierrez, Callie Lyons. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Left to Right: Betti Rollo, Szabi Pataki, Albert Drake, Callie Lyons, James McGinn, Laura Gutierrez, Sara Procopio. Front: James Koroni. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Rules of The Game. Dancers: Top: James Koroni. Left to Right: James McGinn, Sara Procopio, Szabi Pataki, Albert Drake, Callie Lyons, Betti Rollo, Laura Gutierrez. Photo © Sharen Bradford

Images courtesy Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation.