Press and Media
Elena V. Siyanko, Artistic & Executive Director, Curator, Producer
March 2025 — PS21, a Hub for Forward-Looking Art Upstate… Brian Seibert, The New York Times — “The current season — which starts on May 30 with the Hatched Ensemble, led by the South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza — was organized by Siyanko, who left at the end of last year to work on projects like Down to Earth, a new multidisciplinary festival in New York City… The Down to Earth Festival, debuting in September, will bring performances to the stages of the City University of New York and to city parks. “The need for the festival is really obvious,” she said in an interview. “In the New York performing arts scene, there is a glut of expensive new real estate, from the Shed to the Perelman Arts Center, with overpaid executives and tickets so expensive that the majority of New Yorkers can’t afford to go.” To counter these trends, the Down to Earth performances will be free. And by presenting on CUNY stages and in parks “without the extravagant resources of destination ZIP codes,” she said, the festival seeks to meet new audiences in their own spaces…”
February 2025 — Brooklyn Rail: Flesh and Bones, Ruri Mito pushes the body’s limits of stasis and endurance. By Susan Yung — “The presentation of Ruri Mito by PS21 is yet another example of high risk-taking and a smart pooling of resources by this daring upstate cultural outpost, thanks to Elena Siyanko, the just-departed executive and artistic director of the venue since its opening five years ago. (Mito subsequently performed the group work at the Japan Society’s annual contemporary dance festival in New York City.) A search for Siyanko’s successor is underway, but clearly it won’t be an easy task to replace her. In any case, Siyanko has challenged hungry audiences with lexicon-expanding artists such as Ruri Mito.”
January 30, 2025 — PS21’s Circa programmed by Elena Syanko | WAMC Northeast Public Radio — “…For this we acknowledge the outgoing Artistic and Executive Director, Elena Siyanko who built PS21 from a traditional presenting organization into a hive of activity, supporting 24 thought-provoking contemporary performances per season.”
July 1, 2024 — PS21 to celebrate Independence Day with provocative political premiere Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, by Festival d’Avignon Director Tiago Rodrigues. “The dystopian Portuguese play is inspired by Antonio Salazar’s regime and contemporary populist political leaders. Its United States premiere was intentionally scheduled to run Fourth of July weekend at PS21 in Chatham, and this fall, a week after the presidential election, it will run at BAM in Brooklyn… While the United States premiere of “Catarina” coincides with the 50th anniversary of the end of Salazar’s rule and fascism in Europe, the play is not meant to be a celebration but rather a warning, said Elena Siyanko, PS21 executive and artistic director.”
July 2, 2024 — 15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience — “Nothing from PS21, the Center for Contemporary Performance is likely to end up on Broadway. The company’s sweet spot is the international avant-garde… Amid the beauty of its 100-acre hilltop setting, once an apple orchard, PS21 makes its challenging work feel as welcoming as a new kind of nursery.” — Jesse Green, The New York Times
June 22, 2024 — Global dance lands at PS21 and Jacob’s Pillow this summer —”Most-anticipated event: The new work preview of “Noli Timere”… Developed over a six-week residency at PS21, it embodies the organization’s mission, says artistic director Elena Siyanko: “Both the residency and the format of the work represent what we are about: cultivating and presenting productions that transcend boundaries, and supporting dancers and creators to develop new, even unclassifiable work that reflects and helps us grapple with contemporary challenges.”
Oct. 18, 2023 — Over the past few years, Haenel, 34, has become one of the most visible and committed faces of the #MeToo movement in France. The Passion of Adèle Haenel, an Artist of Fierce Political Conviction — Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times
October 11, 2023 — The 2023 season continues, WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Catherine Tharin — …Siyanko concludes, “In our programming I have been interested in how artistic forms respond to the complex realities we’re living in, so invention of new forms, new modes of presentation, the poetics of the theatrical image. This was a lens through which I look for projects to program.”
July 21, 2023 — An Italian Couple Dance for Men Gets a New Spin in New York – Brian Seibert, The New York Times — “You can’t quite place it,” said Elena Siyanko, PS21’s executive and artistic director. “It’s not the past. It’s not nostalgia. But it’s not the present exactly. There’s a subversion of your expectations.” The 20-minute run time, Siyanko acknowledged, makes the dance a little difficult to program. “People expect a delivery of a product, a proper performance at least one hour,” she said. It helps that at PS21, as at most places “Save the Last Dance” is performed, it will be paired with a workshop during which Borzillo and Giannini teach polka chinata to the public. This will be followed by a dance party, a chance to try spinning with a partner while DJ Joro Boro spins records.“
Jun 23, 2023 — Times Union, Jacob’s Pillow, PS21 linked in dance, innovation, season —”At PS21, meanwhile, artistic and executive director Elena Siyanko has programmed a season of experimental work that crosses boundaries and disciplines. “
June 2, 2022 — ‘You Are the Show’: A Hudson Valley Outpost of the Avant-Garde —PS21 presents work that challenges and invites, Brian Seibert, The New York Times. “I am not your entertainment,” he said in a tone that, like the whole event, was at once challenging and inviting. Balancing, or combining, those two qualities was the difficult task that Elena Siyanko set herself when she became PS21’s artistic and executive director, in 2019. New music, experimental dance, genre-blurring performance: Much of what excites her is a “very hard sell,” she said. It’s work that “might leave you confused or off-kilter,” she added, “not your typical bourgeois experience of summer theater in the Berkshires.”
Jan 17, 2022 — “The Art of Theater” stars Jim Fletcher — a stalwart of the New York avant-garde scene, In a Double Bill, the Avant-Garde Meets a Very Good Girl — Jesse Green, The New York Times
Dec. 15, 2021 — “Nouveau cirque like this is where innovation is happening,” said PS21’s executive director, Elena Siyanko…” A Spinning Acrobat Learns to Love Change — Brian Seibert, The New York Times
Jun 22, 2021 — Theater Heads North, and in Every Direction at Once — “I have trouble imagining how “The Dark Master,” which I saw at PS21… — Jesse Green, The New York Times
July 30, 2020 — Public Concerts Resume at PS21 — Second Concert: Beethoven by the Calidore String Quartet, Michael Miller. “A year ago, Elena Siyanko arrived as Executive Director and created an ambitious program involving an impressive international roster of artists performing challenging new works along with a discerning selection of classics. This heightening of PS21’s already creative programming, scheduled to begin in March 2020, was more than welcome, given the bland offerings of some other summer festivals in the area.”
Nov 23, 2020 – Summer Retrospective: Timo Andres and Conor Hanick at PS 21: Andres, Copland, Rzewski, and Ustvolskaya – “I am unaware of any other organization to have offered professionally presented, socially-distanced live music in the Hudson Valley or Berkshires during the summer season, and that in itself was most welcome. But, beyond that, the Modern Music Fest, organized by PS 21’s Artistic Director, Elena Siyanko, only weeks before it opened, to replace an ambitious program of visitors from abroad which was planned last year, long before anyone thought of Covid-19. Most impressive were the coherence and focus of the programming, as well as the level of musicianship among the performing artists, all of whom hailed from New York City… “…gratitude to Ms. Siyanko for giving these important younger musical voices an opportunity to play before an audience in programs which allowed them to share their admirable musicianship, temperament, and values in repertory which truly needs to be heard more often, especially in our musically conservative region. It was wonderful that the concerts took place at all in the middle of the pandemic, but it was more than wonderful that the programming, quality of the playing, and significance of what they meant, placed PS21’s 2020 season in the rare category of artistic enterprises which go beyond the immediate pleasures (Brecht described them as “culinary”) they provide.”
Aug. 28, 2019 — Tresca Weinstein, PS21 offers sessions for neophyte dancers. Series gives everyone chance -— with no one watching — “It’s rare that people have an opportunity to get behind the scenes of someone’s creative process and method firsthand, while moving,” said PS21’s executive director, Elena Siyanko, who conceived the series, which continues through Sept. 21. “It’s something you can’t get through the Q&As that dance festivals normally organize to demystify the process of creating and choreography.” Open to all and offered by donation twice weekly, Movement Without Borders has brought leading choreographers and dancers to teach, including David Neumann, Miguel Gutierrez, Michelle Boulé, Amy Spencer and former New York City Ballet principal Wendy Whelan. The series has run the gamut of styles and approaches, from meditative Feldenkrais practices taught by Gutierrez, to playful improvisation, to a more traditional class…”
May 6, 2019 — Late Nude Dept. A Sensual Dinner for Renoir’s Nudes. At the Explorers Club, a Renoir-themed dinner party features an edible portrait and scents from the painter’s work. — …”The exhibition is titled “Renoir: The Body, the Senses,” and Elena Siyanko, the Clark’s director of advancement initiatives, explained the genesis of the dinner portion of the evening.” The New Yorker Talk of the Town, by Nicolas Niarchos.