In England, the classic system of mixed farming, cycling fields between crops and livestock, is known as “alternate husbandry.” This practice aims to establish a system of perpetual abundance with each component of the farm fueling the other. I can think of no better name to describe the dual vision of dancing and agriculture espoused by Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers in the early years of modern dance in America. Shawn bought the mountaintop farm in Becket, Massachusetts known as Jacob’s Pillow in 1931 and shortly after that established the first-of-its-kind dance festival of the same name.Agriculture was, at this point, central to life at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. As outlined in his book The American Ballet (1926), at the core of Shawn’s vision is a relationship to the land. He wanted his dancers and students in training to be outdoors, live away from the city, and eat a carefully considered, simple, and nutritious diet. To him, “The more sincerely a dancer is an artist, they would insist upon simple and natural food.”1 The dancers tilled their soil, harvested their crops, raised the barns, and in this way grew the festival and built the repertory. As an essential part of their physical training and creative process, this seed-to-stage approach lay the foundation for what would become the most enduring dance festival this country has ever seen.When I began reconstructing Ted Shawn’s dances in 2013 for performances at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I had no idea this was the first step towards starting a farm. My goal was to retrace Shawn’s footsteps as accurately as possible in order to unlock the secrets of the man who helped codify a new artform. What I learned was that the dancing was only part of it. After discovering the role horticulture played in his dance-making and its profound impact on my dancing, I decided to reestablish a growing practice at the festival. Now in its third year, Jacob’s Garden operates as a working farm, a living archive, and a participatory piece of choreography on the campus of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.Alternate husbandry was practiced in the United Kingdom starting in the 1600s. However, there are similar traditions going back centuries and still in use by cultures around the globe. In India, the Navdanya organization seeks to spread cultural knowledge of what they now call “biodiversity-based organic farming.” The Ghana Permaculture Institute advocates for what they term “agroecology.” Vinya Brown of the Heiltsuk Nation describes pursuing “enhance-ability” as a measure beyond sustainable ecology.2 The Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura in Guatemala includes “regenerative agriculture” in its certificate curriculum. While they do not all use livestock, what these practices have in common is a drive to model a living system of interdependent relationships that can maintain and regenerate themselves.3Jacob’s Garden honors this tradition by renewing the practice of agriculture at Jacob’s Pillow and bringing a 1.5-acre parcel of land back into regenerative cultivation. The mixed fruit, vegetable, and flower production both feeds the Pillow community and offers a unique way for its residents, dancers, and visitors to connect and learn about the multiple histories of this land. Following Shawn’s version of alternate husbandry, keeping one foot in the field and one in the studio, enables us to tease out the sensuous connection between art, agriculture, nourishment, and community that can point us towards a more sustainable future.When I first set about to design Jacob’s Garden in 2020, I endeavored to bring a choreographic sensibility to the task. I wanted to find a manageable one- or two-acre parcel among the 220-acre campus that was suitable for growing and central enough to the main campus that it could feel integral to festival activity. The ground cultivated by the original Men Dancers was built decades ago, but there were several suitable spots available on campus. After conducting soil tests and walking through each site with Pillow representatives, including Pam Tatge, artistic and executive director, along with the directors of operations and facilities, among others, we identified Derby Meadow as our trial spot.This meadow previously belonged to the Derby Family, who used the field to pasture their animals. Though many years have passed since then, the manure left by this livestock helped build up healthy soil. It is situated right along George Carter Road, making it visible to visitors on their way in and out, and also featured a barn which we could use for storage and whose roof would serve as a water catchment. All in all, it was pretty close to perfect.To design the layout, I summoned principles from modern American choreographic theory. To my surprise, in Jacob’s Pillow alumnus Doris Humphrey’s book, The Art of Making Dances (1959), I found landscaping advice: “The strictly symmetrical landscaping of gardens and parks is not in favor in this day; the regimenting of nature makes her look very dead indeed, and provides no charm (stimulation) … What we admire most in nature is her waywardness. There is absolutely no symmetry about her.”4Her writing encourages a kind of return to wildness, but what struck me most about revisiting these writings is how Humphrey distills choreography to its core: “Dance is an art in which design has two aspects, time and space.” This, of course, can be said about agriculture as well. In addition to the physical layout of the garden, there is also the progression of the plants over the season to consider, such as succession planting, companion planting, and rotation planning. Much of this pacing is determined not as much by the dates of the festival but on the rhythms of nature, and while the day-to-day may not feel repetitive, the tasks are cyclical in nature. Applying these choreographic principles to the garden made me question who is the choreographer, who is the dancer, and who is the audience in this configuration.After much consideration, we split the field into three parts. One area became the workhorse of the garden with the most intensive vegetable cultivation. Following guidelines set forth by small-agriculture advocates such as Jean-Martin Fortier and Eliot Coleman, we use a rotation of twenty, thirty-five foot-long beds, each around thirty inches wide, spaced with eighteen-inch walking paths. This size works well for a hand-scale market garden and requires minimal tillage, making it economical and environmentally sound. We keep a portion of the garden wild, with a meandering path and several spots for sitting. It felt important to honor what was already in place and provide the pillow community with an opportunity for quiet contemplation and communing with nature. The third section we keep clear, and it provides space for performance, dance class, processing vegetables, and community activities like our annual garlic planting event.Up to now, I have discussed how a choreographic sensibility informed my approach to growing, but the garden has had a reciprocal effect on my dancing. The two labors have a surprising amount in common, and I learned, nuanced ways to support one another. Lawrence Rhodes, former Director of Dance at the Juilliard School, once told me that dancing was a very appreciative artform and that if you put in the work, you will be rewarded. The same holds for farm work.Modern dancers were often called “barefoot dancers” in the tradition of pioneer Isadora Duncan, who famously created spontaneous, free-form dance performances accompanied by literary readings and music. Jazz, ballet, tap, street, and other dance forms typically have a form of shoe to wear, but it is not the case for American modern dance. And while I trained and performed barefoot for most of my career, I had never contemplated what it meant or why we did it. My first clue to the answer jumped out at me when I began volunteering at a biodynamic farm on the eastern end of Long Island.Biodynamic agriculture is a kind of alternative farming that emerged around the same time as American modern dance. Credited to the farmer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1924, it has much in common with alternate husbandry, and treats soil fertility, plant growth, and livestock care as ecologically interrelated tasks. Other farming techniques can damage soil quality over time, with nutrient-draining monocultures. Biodynamic farming provides a remedy that helps create organic harmony and restore and maintain ecological balance in the garden or farm. Biodynamic agriculture also sometimes involves what could be called mysticism, and the farm where I worked was no exception. The farm manager who trained me practiced holding each seed in her mouth for several minutes before planting so the plant could learn her taste preferences. She also walked her fields barefoot each morning for the soil to absorb toxins. She wanted the crops to learn to help her achieve her life goals, just as she labored for the health of the farm. This was a lot for me to process as a child raised in Manhattan, but it led me on a journey to unlocking a new kind of groundedness in my dancing.Throughout my training, my educators had cajoled me for being too light, too ethereal, too fey. It was both the cause and the manifestation of my insecurities. After pursuing farm work as part of my Ted Shawn research, I sensed a change in my physicality. It did not happen overnight, but in time, phrases such as “ground yourself,” “drop your weight,” or “take root” began to sink in and make sense. The answer had been there all the while, right under my feet, but it took the sensuous and sweaty labor in the fields for me to understand its significance.Years later, in 2018, I was invited by the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to reconstruct Ted Shawn’s Dance of the Ages (1938). Shawn considered Dance of the Ages to be his masterpiece. It is loosely based on the radical queer text Towards Democracy (1883) by Edward Carpenter and intended to respond to what Shawn saw as the rise of fascism around the world. Until this point, I had only worked on his solo choreography, and in undertaking this ensemble work, I discovered an entirely new aspect of Shawn’s vision.Shawn was creating an ecosystem for dance quite different from his contemporaries. His holistic approach demanded that his dancers’ responsibilities extend beyond the stage. These men operated the lights, stitched the costumes, built the barns, grew the food, and much more. This sense of interdependence and mutual support permeates the choreography. When performing Dance of the Ages, I feel that getting to the end will require every dancer’s total cooperation in a way that reminds me of certain farm tasks. The way the men lift and support one another, take flight and collapse, and tenderly touch is also part of what made these works so radical at the time of their creation.Barton Mumaw, Shawn’s principal dancer and lover of many years, once said the following about the effects of farming on the dances: “The closeness of working together here in the studio and in outside labor created, I think, a kind of overtone, an oversoul, in the movement of the group that gave it its greatest power.”5 Just as growers learned through the practice of alternate husbandry, so too did the dancers in this young company learn how distinct yet interrelated disciplines can support and enhance one another. Shawn and his dancers were able to tease out the sensuous connections to place, power, nourishment, and community that laid the foundation for his enduring body of work.Unfortunately, since Ted Shawn’s day, the average dancer’s—and I daresay the average person’s—connections to soil and nature have diminished rather than grown. Most dance companies are based in urban settings where even a casual relationship with the outdoors can be uncommon. And despite a recent resurgence of interest in ecologically sustainable growing practices such as alternate husbandry and biodynamic or regenerative agriculture, the vast majority of crops in America are still grown using “conventional” extractive and industrial practices.The pitfalls of such growing practices would have been front-of-mind to Ted Shawn. Irresponsible farming techniques in the 1930s contributed to the devastation of the Dust Bowl and sparked a national conversation about the importance of soil stewardship.6 More recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that agriculture accounts for twelve to fifteen percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, industrial farming systems such as mono-crop production are particularly vulnerable to the very climate-related impacts they accelerate. If alternate husbandry provides a model of sustainable symbiosis, we are surrounded by examples of the hazards of divorce.This connection, seen on a macro scale with industrial agriculture, can also mirror in more personal, intimate ways. Karen Rodriguez, a vice president of the non-profit organization Kiss the Ground, believes that when people experience a reverent connection to nature, they enter into mutually supportive relationships of growth and healing. According to Rodriguez, “We can heal the soil, and in turn, the soil heals us. Regenerative Agriculture is about more than just stewarding the land; it’s about equity, culture, tradition, mindfulness and a healthier humanity.”7 This revelation made me look inward to reevaluate my relationship with the earth and begin a personal journey to heal my occasional abusive relationship with my own body. For me, and, I imagine, for many dancers, it started early. At twelve, as a student at the School of American Ballet, I was thrilled to be cast as the Prince in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (1954). To my horror, however, at the first costume fitting, I popped a button off the pink, three-piece suit I was meant to wear. I understood that if I couldn’t fit into the costume, I would lose the part. I went through incredible and misguided lengths to change my body shape. These included extreme dieting, bulimia, and binding my waist at night with a series of woven belts. In the short term, it worked: I lost the weight and played the part. But I also quit ballet shortly thereafter.Eventually, five or six years later, I was coaxed back into dance through the friendlier and more inclusive guise of improvisation and modern dance. Still, in my early twenties, when facing a performance where I would be essentially naked, painted white, in a spotlight on a Lincoln Center stage, the voices came back, and I began throwing up my food again. While it was never openly discussed, I was not alone as pressure to meet body standards rippled through the company and caused more than a few of us to diminish in plain sight. It felt as if we were turning ourselves into ghosts: less vibrant and less corporeal versions of ourselves. While this might be an extreme example, an extractive, one-sided relationship between a dancer and their body can feel baked into our training and sets many on an unsustainable trajectory.I do not know if Ted Shawn was concerned with the stresses of body image when he advocated that his dancers live away from the city and eat a farm-fresh diet, but he was interested in creating a sustainable ecosystem for dance. It is hard to imagine such an ecosystem without addressing the physical and psychological burnout and injury, which is all too common in the field today. The plants I tend to in the garden teach me daily what it takes to grow and flourish. I hope that by building this garden on the historic dance festival grounds, I will encourage healthier attitudes towards the bodies on which our careers depend. Today, I am a full forty-five pounds heavier than when I danced on that Lincoln Center stage. My bulimia and psoriasis are gone and I enjoy better health than I have in decades.Finally, I cannot contemplate any notion of husbandry without acknowledging my life partner, R. B. Schlather, whom I married in 2014. He is the person who taught me how to husband. I do not think Shawn could have imagined a future where he might marry a fellow man or have the pleasure of living openly on a spectrum of gender and sexual identity. It is with a special kind of glee that I wear my wedding band while performing his work. Some have even theorized that his fascination with nature was a compensation for an anxiety about his project’s homosexual/homosocial sterility. Dance scholar Andrew Hewitt opines that Shawn held a desire to replace heterosexual fecundity with a kind of sexual/desexualized intercourse with the earth.8 Whatever his frustrations, Papa Shawn, as he was known, had a lasting impact on dance in America and continues to inspire generations of dancers—and now farmers.