:: the [visualized] ideas
that challenge the perspective
absorb the moment
provoke another story
experiment with right now ::
[THE MISSION]
The Pillow Project is a company of visual composers, physical conductors and avant-garde performing artists for creating spontaneous expressions in postmodern/free-jazz dance. Through a highly collaborative process and organically jazz philosophy, our developed methods to motion emphasize on 'physicalizing the music' just as a musician 'jazzes the moment'. The collection of resident company artists of The Pillow Project are committed to igniting a new movement in jazz dance and performances, both in Pittsburgh and internationally.
[THE JAZZ]
The Pillow Project's postmodern-jazz is dance that combines a natural, organic physical consideration with a jazz philosophy, intention and soul; a departure from traditional sequencing, shapes and prepared technique in place of hyper-articulated motion manipulation and a visual musicality. This structure may be composed in advance, partially or even completely, but it is the freedom of making musical choices in the moment that liberates any binding to anything that is not an honest expression of the present.
Our approach to dance is ‘non-fiction’: bending towards an imperfect, recognizable physicality rather than a technical virtuosity or athleticism; the methods of our work are our reaction to the commercialism and presentation constraints of contemporary jazz dance; a return to the art of freedom and spontaneous expression; deliberate musical choices articulated through an emphasis on physical motion from the very instrument that can play itself.
[THE PERFORMANCES]
"jazz-happenings": The Pillow Project’s signature Second Saturdays monthly jazz happenings is the company’s unique response to the First Fridays open-gallery scene in Pittsburgh. Second Saturdays is series of intimate lounge-style performances where the audience is free to come and go as they please, choose what to pay for admission, and choose their own level of engagement of the featured exhibits and performance, whether sitting on an eclectic mix of found furniture from Construction Junction, or walking right up to it and changing the space in which it happens. Second Saturdays are about "unformalizing" everything about dance and letting it respond to the moment freely and spontaneously within a designed concept or work; a one-of-a-kind venue for dance, music and local artists to interact and collaborate. Every second Saturday of the month (except September) features an ongoing evening open to the public full of spontaneous performances, directed works and live multimedia experimentations from the company and special guest artists. [Doors open 8pm-midnight / $10 suggested donation]
"performance-installations": Original full-length works built directly into The Space Upstairs feature an in-depth look at the company’s most passionate perspectives and ideas with small, intimate audiences and fully-immersive environments. With installations running for multiple weeks, our evening-length performances are made to evolve and change over time, fully utilizing vivid visual projections and sound design to create unique canvases for compelling multi-sensory compositions; complete visceral experiences of challenging perception, time and musicality.
[THE THEORY]
The resident artists of The Pillow Project create work under an original method of dance, P2 Theory, created by Pearlann Porter and continually developed by the performing artists of the company. P2 Theory is the study of how dance and music can visually and spontaneously work together. It examines the inherent language of movement and motion to identify patterns and structures in an individual’s physical instincts across or within genres, styles, or durations of physical time. P2 Theory asks for the body to be the visual instrument and for the motion to be played like the notes of that instrument… an instrument that is the musician.
The practice and articulation of hyper-intricate motion subtleties is at the core of how the visual notes and sounds are executed. Motion articulation is often described rather than quantified, therefore there is room to interpret how to execute precisely each articulation. For example, a "dot" of motion is often referred to as "separated" or "detached" motions rather than having a defined, or specific movement by which the "dot" of separation or detachment is to take place. Often the manner in which a performer decides to execute a given articulation of motion is done so by the context of the piece, phrase or circumstance.
In a grand sense, P2 Theory distills and analyzes the fundamental motion and movement elements of the body as a visual instrument —rhythm, speed, stillness, change, function, gravity, structure, circumstantial neutrality, texture, color, etc. Broadly, P2 Theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about dance, as at its core, the theory is not held to any concept of right or wrong, good or bad, or better of worse; all dance and choices within dance is just simply defined as ‘different’. The resident artists of The Pillow Project study this philosophy and its properties, some having applied acoustics, visual components, site-specific locations, human physiology, and psychology to the explanation of how and why music is perceived through the body.
[THE HISTORY]
The Pillow Project’s signature is written in jazz.
Founded in 2004 by Artistic Director, Pearlann Porter, the [then] Pillow Project Dance Company began as a fledging but determined and enthusiastic pick-up group of dancers, visual artists and musicians. The company's early years were an assortment of original short works in conceptual mixed-media shows incorporating dance, graphic design, video projection and live music, from a small, intimate showcases of new works (kindasorta – 2004), to the massive production undertakings of a all-out classic rock concert (The Concept Album Tour – 2005), a multi-room, wrap-around installation inspired by The White Stripes (Striped – 2006), an impromptu nightclub in the middle of a warehouse (The SwankEasy – 2006), and an Orwell-meets-Radiohead performance-installation (Twenty Eighty-Four – 2008).
For the first several years, The Pillow Project consisted of a large ensemble of performers and guest artists, and soon found itself at the crossroads of either 
pursuing the path of becoming a more typical, concert-style contemporary dance company or taking the route of something far more experimental. Naturally, the concept and philosophy of the company evolved, and the very intent of The Pillow Project changed, incorporating the idea of 'event installations', 'performance happenings' and the notion of creating a postmodern-jazz philiosphy.
Since 2006, The Pillow Project has been the artistic residents of Construction Junction’s warehouse loft space, also known as The Space Upstairs. Through this unique location, The Pillow Project has been able to carry out its mission to experiment with dance presentation through reinventing the nature of how the company’s work was created and experienced. Work that is built and performed directly into the space in which it is created in - without walls or distinction from where the stage ended and the audience began – has allowed the company’s work to break out as a natural expression of its location. The Pillow Project became a small, intimate collection of resident artists operating under a completely improvisational and original postmodern-jazz methodology.
The company’s most recent evening-length, panorama-style installation Paper Memory (2010) entirely extracted the choreography and rehearsal process of producing work, the freedom of the body to visually and specifically play the music of the moment. The concept relied on the individuality and sensibilities of the three performing artists to completely improvise the musicality around the visual direction of the show for each of the 22 performances. The work featured the company's first original full-length score and broke new ground for the company's distinct application for technical/multimedia design.
In the Fall of 2011, The Pillow Project traveled to Paris, France to collaborate and perform with jazz poet, Moe Seager. In their time creating work in Paris, the company forged a new appreciation for spontaneous public performances in a wide array of locations and venues. With plans to already return abroad in the Summer of 2012, the company seeks to establish a regular presence in both Pittsburgh and Paris to not only internationally share and spread the company’s accessible concepts in postmodern-jazz, but to create an organic crossover of the learned perspectives and distinct differences on jazz movement and local culture.
With plans in the works for creating a new dance and music festival at Pittsburgh’s historic Carrie Furnace, a return trip to Paris, a robust Second Saturdays jazz-happening lineup for 2012 and teaching residencies at several Universities and The Space Upstairs, The Pillow Project is fully committed to the concept of igniting a new movement in dance; to begin a new method of physicality and musicality that brings the creation of motion into the present moment; to play the body as a jazz musician would play their instrument.
Jazz is a verb. And The Pillow Project is a new jazz.
