North American premiere of Philippe Quesne's Farm Fatale
2023 Season
As Artistic Executive Director Elena Siyanko conceptualized and curated international seasons of 20-24 productions and 50+ community events annually, across two theater venues and public spaces, encompassing theater, dance, music, opera, international contemporary circus, street arts, film, and public art installations.
2023 Season | Adventurous, Collaborative, Engaged
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE: Cirque and performing arts from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and beyond
May 21, 2023 Season Opening, with a special performance by Nuevo Flamenco luminary and Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía director Patricia Guerrero who continues to spearhead a new generation of flamenco artists redefining this traditional music and dance art form for the 21st century.
July 22, Runners, an invigorating work of Czech New Circus from Cirk La Putyka. A hit at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Guardian calls Runners “a moving exploration of time . . . through dance, music, acrobatics and dialogue.”
July 29, 2023 Save the Last Dance for Me. Italian theatermaker Alessandro Sciarroni’s inventive reincarnation of the polka chinata, a nearly lost Bolognese courtship dance from the last century. “A dance researcher with the soul of a visual artist.” — La Repubblica.
August 19, 2023 Amoukanama Cirque, Guinean acrobats, dancers, and musicians in FA (“To Come”) a joyous enactment of migration from Conakry to Europe and beyond in search of education and opportunity. A PATHWAYS program in partnership with the Town of Chatham Crellin Park Day.
August 31; September 2–3, ANIMA, an immersive multidisciplinary performance-installation about the earth’s climate future by visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, director Maëlle Poésy, aerial artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin. A Festival d’Avignon 2022 and Venice Biennial 2023 highlight
October 13–14, 2023 L’Etang (The Pond). Gisèle Vienne’s scintillating adaptation of Robert Walser’s bitter family drama. With Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel and music by doom metal band Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O’Malley. “A transfixing performance.” — Laura Cappelle, The New York Times.
THEATER AND DANCE. Eight World and North American Premieres / Three U.S. Company Debuts
April 21-23, 2023: The Director, APHIDS (Australia)
June 22–23, Paul Taylor Dance Company, with a program featuring three Taylor masterworks, Mercuric Tidings, A Field of Grass, and Piazzolla Caldera
September 16, An Immigrant’s Story, Wanjiru Kamuyu, moving through a landscape of 35 empty black chairs, creates an intimate portrait of the migrant’s experience of being uprooted, exotified, and subjected to racism as she searches for a place in the world.
September 30, 2023 Never Twenty One, SmaÏl Kanouté’s tribute to young Black victims of gun violence. Three male figures, torsos graffitied with testimonials spoken by victims’ families, recount the stories of lives cut short through contemporary dance movements rooted in the street styles of New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg.
December 2–3, 2023 Pauline Oliveros: Intensity 20.15: Grace Chase with speaking flutist Claire Chase and Expanded Instrument System; Paired with This Is Mary Brown, a one-woman play by OBIE Award-winning actor/director Winsome Brown.
Jan. 5 & 6, 2024 Hamlet | Toilet (Japan), by the highly acclaimed Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race (KPR).
PS21 HOUSE BLEND CONCERT SERIES, brewed with audiences in mind
July 16, 2023 House Blend concert I: Leo Ornstein; Claude Vivier; Lili Boulanger; Igor Stravinsky; Rebecca Saunders. Featuring Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and Adrian Sandi (clarinet).
August 5, 2023 House Blend concert II: The Ulysses Quartet, Nuika Wadden (harp), Sun Li (pipa), in a double-bill program featuring works by Tan Dun, Berio, Telemann, Ligeti, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Beethoven, Sky Macklay, and Rhiannon Giddens.
August 25, 2023 House Blend concert III: Hub New Music ensemble (flute, clarinet, strings), Ayano Kataoka and Matthew Gold (percussion), and Adam Tendler, piano.
October 26, 2023 Miranda Cuckson (violin) and Blair McMillan (piano) Two House Blend favorites return in a program of works by Beethoven, Ross Lee Finney, Janacek, and Prokofiev.
Dec 21, 2023 Talea Ensemble Solstice Concert Champions of visionary new works, the ensemble performs Georg Friedrich Haas’s sensory Solstices (2017) for 10 musicians in complete darkness.
PATHWAYS Community Programming. Immersive and participatory, our season-long series at the intersection of nature and the arts, free and open to all.
June 17, 2023 PS21 presents The Resistance Revival Chorus celebrating Juneteenth at Promenade Hill Park in Hudson, NY. The celebrated collective of over 60 women and non-binary singers fuses music and activism to inspire political and social change
July 2, 2023 Community-wide Social Dance party with a multi-Grammy Award–nominated trailblazing band Plena Libre, masters of the traditional Puerto Rican plena and bomba styles
July 14, 2023 Andalusian band La Banda Morisca (Spain)
August 31, 2023 Invisible Cities, a roving performance installation inspired by Italo Calvino’s fictions, developed during Processional Arts Workshop’s 10-day sessions. Part of PS21 PATHWAYS DAY.
August 31, 2023 Save the Last Dance for Me dancers Gianmaria Borzillo and Giovanfrancesco Giannini will lead a community workshop, where participants dive into the polka chinata, helping to rescue an art form from the brink of extinction. Culminating in a Community Dance DJ party with Tim Davis (aka DJ Giant Corporation).
ARTISTS RESIDENCIES
May 25–June 2, 2023 The NEXT Festival of Emerging Artists, a program for early-career musicians, composers and choreographers in residency. On June 2, a concert celebrating The NEXT Festival‘s 10th Anniversary, with a program of five World Premieres for string orchestra by guest artist guitarist and composer Yvette Young, 2022 Pulitzer Finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti, composer/violinist (and Next Festival alum) Che Buford, saxophonist/composer Matthew Evan Taylor, and NEXT Festival Artistic Director Peter Askim.
July 9–15, 2023 Susie Ibarra’s Rhythm in Nature residency, 22 musicians | July 15: Four Meditations on Impermanence: The composer joined by guest soloists, Tashi Dorji guitar, Phyllis Chen pianist, sound artist and multiple percussionists and ensembles in a work developed at PS21. World premiere of the ensemble version.
October 17–25, 2023 Creative Residency: Sourcières. French choreographer Anne Collod and 3 guest artists explore the work of dance pioneers Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Trisha Brown to develop new relationships to our surroundings and identities.
December 11–17, 2023 Creative Residency: The Civilians. The celebrated U.S. investigative theater company developed Sex Variants 1941, a music-theater piece.
Movement Without Borders, weekly sessions of yoga, Pilates, and wellness classes, plus free workshops with visiting luminaries.
Season-long creative engagement with the grounds including open rehearsals with visiting artists, self-guided ecology walks, and StoryWalk, a collaboration between PS21 and the Columbia Land Conservancy.
Site-specific art installations: James Casebere’s Solo Pavilion for Two or Three, an architectural sculpture that interrogates the delicate balancing act between the human need for shelter and our obligation to preserve the landscape.