2021 Season
Elena Siyanko, Artistic Executive Director, Curator & Producer
2021 SEASON AT-A-GLANCE
2021 Modern Opera Fest: The Extinctionist; Pan; Ipsa Dixit; Savage Winter
May 29–30, 2021 The Extinctionist. HeartBeat Opera’s first original work, from composer Daniel Schlosberg with a libretto by Amanda Quaid, based on her one-act play. A dark comedy about a young couple grappling with the prospect of bringing a child into a world threatened with environmental collapse, directed by Louise Proske and music director Jacob Ashworth, The Extinctionist was developed in residency at PS21, May 1-29, 2021.
July 16 2021. Pan Flutist Claire Chase, a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, in a Marcos Balter’s opera with chorus, directed by visual artist Doug Fitch. Pan transforms artist worship into collective, grassroots action through the lens of the myth of the rustic god of shepherds and inventor of the reed pipe
September 4, 2021. Ipsa Dixit, composed by Kate Soper and directed by Ashley Tata, is a theatrical chamber opera for soprano, flute, violin, viola, and percussion situated at the intersection of music, language, and meaning. Blending monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy, the opera skewers the treachery of language and question the authenticity of artistic expression. With Kate Soper (soprano) and the Wet Ink Ensemble: Josh Modney (violin and viola), Erin Lesser (flute), and Ian Antonio (percussion).
September 9, 2021. Savage Winter, Composed by Douglas J. Cuomo and staged by tenor Tony Boutté, the fiercely contemporary chamber opera reimagines Wilhelm Müller’s poetry cycle Winterreise as a delirious fever dream.
CONTEMPORARY DANCE, THEATER and PERFORMANCE
June 17–20, 2021 The Dark Master From writer/director Kuro Tanino and his company Niwa Gekidan Penino, a disturbing contemporary vision of thought control and the manipulation of desire through visual storytelling augmented by VR. U.S. premiere. Copresented with Japan Society NYC.
July 2–3, 2021. Paul Taylor Dance Company performing three works from its repertory of modern classics, Company B, Esplanade, and Aureole
August 7, 2021. Paul Taylor Dance Company performed their new staging of Kurt Jooss’s masterwork The Green Table (1932), an interwar vision of the futility of armed conflict that bears comparison to the dance of death.
December 21–22, 2021: Compagnie Libertivore’s Phasmes and Hêtre (Fanny Soriano), France
January 14–15, 22–23 2022: Theater Premiere developed and produced at PS21: The Art of Theater and With My Own Hands. Following their residency at PS21, Pascal Rambert and the actors returned to PS21’s Black Box Theater for four public performances of The Art of Theater and With My Own Hands.
PS21 HOUSE BLEND. House Blend Concerts are brewed with the audience in mind, featuring celebrated soloists and ensembles. Guest Curaror: Alan Feinberg:
July 5, 2021. House Blend I: Miranda Cuckson (violin), Matt Haimovitz (cello), Matthew Gold (percussion), and Geoffrey Burleson (piano)
Ralph Shapey: Evocation No. 1 for Violin, with Percussion and Piano (3rd movement)
Billy Jim Layton: Five Studies for Violin and Piano
Franco Donatoni: Mari
David Sanford: 22 Part 1 for Cello and Piano
Giya Kancheli: Nach dem Weinen (Having Wept).
July 5 House Blend Opening Night, a Pre-Concert with cellist Matt Haimovitz. All New York State premiers, and Vijay Iyer’s “Equal night” is a world premiere.
Lisa Bielawa: “Missa Primavera”
Juri Seo: “Two Rhapsodies of Spring”
inti figgis-vizueta: “the motion between three worlds”
David T. Little: “The Crocus Palimpsest”
Vijay Iyer: “Equal night”
August 8, 2021. House Blend II: Steven Beck and Susan Grace, the celebrated piano duo “Quattro Mani,” and violinist Siwoo Kim playing works by Bach, Biber, Nancarrow, and Wolpe.
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber: Passacaglia
Stefan Wolpe: The Man from Midian
Conlon Nancarrow: Study #7 transcribed for two pianos by Thomas Adès
Johann Sebastian Bach: Actus Tragicus transcribed for piano by György Kurtág
August 19 HOUSE BLEND III: Ariadne Greif (soprano), Leelanee Sterrett (horn), MirandaCuckson (violin), and Eric Huebner (piano) perform the music of Copland, Dallapicolla, and Ligeti.
Luigi Dallapicolla: Tartiniana Seconda
Aaron Copland: from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson
György Ligeti: Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano
August 26, 2021. House Blend IV: Emily Daggett Smith (violin), Andrea Casarrubios (cello), Blair McMillen (piano), and Charmaine Lee (vocals) in a program of Pärt, Ravel, Schoenfield, and Lee’s own composition, Solo
Arvo Pärt: Mozart-Adagio, for Violin, Violoncello and Piano
Paul Schoenfield: Three Country Fiddle Pieces
Charmaine Lee, solo
Maurice Ravel: Sonata for Violin and
June 8, 2021. House Blend “special brew”: Escher String Quartet Recipients of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet played Bartók’s Quartet No. 6 for Strings, BB 119 and the Quartet in D minor for Strings, Op. 56, “Voces intimae” by Jean Sibelius.
July 24, 2021 Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with percussionist Britton-René Collins and special guests from Caleb Teicher & Company performs Villa-Lobos, Rosauro, and Sitkovetsky.
PS21 PATHWAYS community programs, presented free and at low cost
August 7, 2021 Branché by Cirque Barcode and Acting for Climate Montréal. Plus community workshops, part of PATHWAYS/ Crellin Community Park Day.
August 9–15 The Wooster Group Summer Institute. A free weeklong performance intensive for Columbia County public school students. Wooster Group founder Kate Valk and guest artists introduced the young participants to techniques of movement, writing, voice training, and video. Concluding with public performances in the Dance Barn, August 14–15.
August 12–14, 2021 SHE/HER Celebrated actor, director, writer, and founder of Actors Rising, Nicole Ansari directs local actors in interconnected monologues, a series of meditative vignettes addressing identity, heritage, and personhood.
August 17, 2021 Instable, Nicolas Fraiseau, acrobatic Everyman, aided by members of the circus troupe Les Hommes Penchés attempts to suspend a pole on an invisible wire. Aided by members of the troupe Les Hommes Penchés, he climbs, loses his balance, falls, and climbs again, in a struggle that vacillates between comedy and tragedy.
August 12–13, 2021 Fraiseau and Les Hommes Penchés led workshops for aspiring young circus artists at PS21, including participants in the Wooster Group Summer Institute
September 17 End of Summer Celebration Ecstatic Dances, free-form expressive dance with sound artists, music producers, DJ & video artists Joro-Boro and Keena Maya
ONGOING PROGRAMS: Movement Without Borders, Thursdays, May 13–September 15, 2022. PUBLIC ART: James Casebere: Solo Pavilion for Two or Three; Self-Guided Explorations: StoryWalks, June 5–October, Environmental Encounters: Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program Walks, July–August, FREE.
2021 RESIDENCIES
December 11—17, 2021: Katiana Rangel and Jim Fletcher in Creative Residency Residency to develop Blasted, by Sarah Kane
December 6–11; January 5–14, 2021: Residency of Pascal Rambert, with actors Jim Fletcher and Ismaïl ibn Conner. Celebrated French playwright and director Pascal Rambert was in residence at PS21 from December 6–11, 2021, adapting and rehearsing two plays PS21 produced: The Art of Theater, performed by Jim Fletcher, and With My Own Hands, featuring Ismaïl ibn Conner. Premiered at PS21 in Jan 2022.
January 2021. American Ballet Theater. For the second of their 2020–21 residencies, ABT’s dancers were led by Jose Sebastian, the director of ABT Incubator, in the company’s annual choreography workshop
February 14–March 22, 2021. Camille A. Brown & Dancers: The Obie-winning choreographer, twelve dancers, two musicians, their manager and a chef, in a Covid-bubble residency, developing Queens, Brown’s new solo work, and reimagining Matchstick (2008), a work inspired by the Great Migration that interweaves poetry and earthbound movement and is newly relevant in our present moment.
PRESS:
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
Sept. 9, 2021 — Disparities, Intended or Otherwise: House-Blend III at PS 21. Works by Dallapiccola, Copland and Ligeti. Miranda Cuckson, violin; Eric Huebner, piano; Ariadne Greif, soprano; Leelanee Sterrett, horn.