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.

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“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........

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