Jacob’s Pillow is the America of dance festivals: the oldest in modern times, as they say of our 250-year democracy. Hewn from a Berkshires farm by Ted Shawn, proponent of men dancing manfully, the Pillow’s Depression beginnings in 1931 reek of rugged individualism—the pioneer claiming dominion over the wilderness. But the festival has mainly taken its cue from this piney outpost’s history as a way station on the Underground Railroad to this year honor a range of African-American work. From mid-June to the end of August, the Pillow hosts the modern-dance-inclined Urban Bush Women, the MacArthur genius Kyle Abraham (a world premiere!), and—for the troupe of Ted Shawn’s former, famous dance partner, the ever-astounding Martha Graham—the sly-thinking original Hope Boykin and her onetime Ailey colleague Jamar Roberts, who stands apart and above almost everyone else in his generation. Meanwhile, “tapologist” Brinae Ali and the Baltimore Music Collective represent the hoofer line, which stretches all the way back to slave times. The Baby Laurence Legacy Project celebrates this bebop maverick. For one day apiece on the outdoor stage, canopied by feathery trees and backdropped by a valley blasted with light, the women of the deeply rooted Honolulu troupe Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima swish their Ti-leaf skirts and Acosia Red Elk, of northeast Oregon’s Umatilla tribe, spreads her wings. —Apollinaire Scherr