2022 Season

Elena Siyanko, Artistic Director, Curator, Producer. Responsible for a wide range of performances and spearheading efforts to bring diverse and inspiring artists to the US. Siyanko brought new multidisciplinary projects and work in public spaces, curated more than 200 events for diverse audiences, developed collaborations with national and international organizations, and led multiple residency programs in dance, theater, opera, and music resulting in annual world premiere performances and providing incubator space for developing work with national and interactional artists.

2022 SEASON

The 2022 Season included U.S. company debuts, world and North American premieres, international artists, and performances of work developed in our growing artists’ residency program. More than 50 events, staged in the theater, in our fields, and along our trails, by a constellation of celebrated and emerging dancers and choreographers, musicians and singers, actors, directors, and international street artists who are breathing new life into traditional genres and creating new ones. Expanded PS21’s Pathways, our popular pas de deux between nature and the arts, at its largest and most ambitious, still free of charge to the community.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE AND PERFORMANCE: 

June 3–4, 2022 Re:INCARNATION, QDance’s ode to the richness of Nigerian culture and Africa’s powers of reinvention, drawing on Afrobeats, Afro dances, and Black aesthetics. US Premiere.

July 15, 2022 Anopas by Compagnie Art Move Concept fuses hip-hop and contemporary dance with elements of silent comedy, mime, and circus arts to expand and enrich our sense of physical and emotional possibility

July 6–7 Paul Taylor Dance Company One of dance’s most innovative companies returns to PS21 with three groundbreaking works: Airs (1978), Cloven Kingdom (1976), and Syzygy (1987)

July 28–29, 2022 One. One & One Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company brings choreographer Noa Wertheim’s vision of sustainability to the Pavilion Theater’s stage: by ten dancers on a soil-covered floor

August 5, 2022 Mark Morris Dance Group performing V and Water to the music of Schumann’s Quintet and Handel’s Water Music.

August 6, 2022 Mark Morris Dance Group presents Pacific, Jenn and Spencer, and Grand Duo, set to the music of Lou Harrison and Henry Cowell performed live by the MMDG Music Ensemble.

August 11, 2022 DakhaBrakha.The Ukrainian “ethno-chaos” band mixes punk-pop, traditional Ukrainian music and more in its accompaniment to Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s silent classic Earth.

September 2–3 Farm Fatale, Philippe Quesne’s eco-futurist fable, marries activism and art in an indelible confrontation with environmental apocalypse. A centerpiece of PS21 Pathways.

PS21 HOUSE BLEND series:

June 24 House Blend I: The Ulysses Quartet, Leelanee Sterrett (horn), Alan Feinberg (piano), Brandon Ilaw (percussion), Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and David Adam Moore (reciter) perform Bach, Schoenberg, Wuorinen, and Lansky.
June 26 House Blend II: Brandon Ilaw (percussion), Milutin Jocic (baritone), Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and Leelanee Sterrett (horn) play works by Schubert, Helps, Gerhard, Kondo, Kagel, and Alvarez.
July 8 House Blend III: Lizzie Burns (bass) Joshua Roman (cello) Amy Burton (soprano) John Musto (piano) play works by Druckman, Kancheli, Aucoin, and love songs and favorites from the Great American songbook.

July 21 & 23, 2022 Three Decembers Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer probe the tensions between an aging actress and her children, a daughter in a failing marriage and a young, gay son under the shadow of the AIDS. Copresented with the Berkshire Opera Festival

Oct 30, 2022 | PS21 House Blend World Premiere – Inside Spaces, Amir ElSaffar and Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch. An electro-acoustic collaboration by trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar and electronics performer and composer Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch.

Nov 18, 2022 | PS21 House Blend “special brew”:  Resonant Mechanisms: The Experimental Music Tradition in Upstate New York – [Switch~ Ensemble]. Featuring the world premiere of newly commissioned works by composers Victoria Cheah and Jen Kutler, alongside works from Sarah Hennies and Julius Eastman, the program explores a range of modalities in music for quintet and electronics.

PREMIERES DEVELOPED IN RESIDENCY:

May 21–22, 2022 The Legend of the Waitress & The Robber World premiere of the groundbreaking collaboration between Concrete Temple Theater and South Korea’s Playfactory Mabangzen and Yellowbomb. A dystopian comedy, of isolation and aging, developed in residency at PS21.
July 10, 2022 I am the utterance of my name: Divining Mary Magdalene: Playwright Sylvia Milo, percussionist Nathan Davis, and dancer Joanna Kotze in a preview premiere of the music-theater exploration of the ancient and modern myths, beliefs, and symbols surrounding Mary Magdalene.

PATHWAYS Community Programming:

June 10, 2022 The Sean Mason Quintet.  The pianist/composer, a Jazz at Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, leads his ensemble in selections from his Southern, Migration, and Recovery suites.
June 17, 2022 Vox Sambou. The explosive Montreal-based collective blends the traditional rhythms of Haitian Compas with elements of Afrobeat, jazz, reggae, and hip-hop in Haitian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

July 25, 2022 Field of Vision. Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon creates a large-scale, site-responsive work, 36 percussionists moving across PS21’s landscape, directed by Doug Perkins

August 6, 2022 Jamal Jackson Dance Company premieres 846, a reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, transposed to contemporary “everyday” America’s sacrifices of Black lives

September 3–4 C’est pas là, c’est par là (It’s Not Here, It’s Over Here) Compagnie Galmae – Juhyung Lee (France / S. Korea) transforms a crowd of spectators into a problem-solving collective.

September 4, 2022 Summer Season Ending Celebration. Ecstatic Dance led by DJ Joro-Boro, Compagnie Galmae’s participatory C’est pas là, c’est par là, and a concert by The Moles, Philippe Quesne’s larger-than-life creatures who combine utopian spectacle and punk rock music

NOV 12, 2022 | Mirissa Neff screens This is National Wake, her documentary tracing the rise and fall of the multiracial South African punk group. The screening is followed by a Q&A and DJ set of vintage African dance grooves spun by director Mirissa Neff.

ONGOING: Movement without Borders: May–September, 2022. Dance with Hudson Valley-based theater makers and Master Classes with visiting artists and other performers throughout the summer, including Dance with the Mark Morris Dance Group on the Hudson Waterfront! Programs for Young People: PS21’s annual series of Friday afternoon performances and workshops by visiting companies, as well as other Immersive Workshops, Classes, and Encounters with the Arts and Nature.