Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga of Compagnie Basinga
2025, “Down to Earth,” NYC’s first international festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces. Photo: Highwire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga of Compagnie Basinga
Elena Siyanko serves as Founder and Co-Director of DOWN TO EARTH international festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces.
She designed the festival’s concept and currently manages the overall organizational framework, cross-agency partnerships, programming and fundraising for the multi-site Down to Earth Festival, which features local and global artists, activating urban public spaces through partnerships with NYC Parks, Open Streets, community organizations, and international collaborators, Wiener Festwochen and Τhéâtre de la Ville, among others.
DOWN TO EARTH: International Festival of Multidisciplinary Performance in Public Spaces, to Take Place August 29–September 7, 2025
Stay tuned for NYC’s champions of public space and advocates of the powerful role of outdoor performances in transforming communities and spaces! New York’s DOWN TO EARTH Festival celebrates outdoor performance in city parks and public spaces!
DOWN TO EARTH brings world-class international performance, theater, contemporary circus, an opera installation, and participatory events—absolutely free—directly to New York City’s vibrant and diverse communities. An initiative that embraces global exchange and democratizes cultural expression, the inaugural festival runs from August 29–September 7, 2025. It was conceived by The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center CUNY, which serves as the festival’s producer, organizational home, and fiscal agent.
Here in NYC, partnering with parks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens and collaborating with more than 10 dynamic cultural and community organizations, we’re staging performances and workshops across multiple urban spaces. Citizen expression beats at the heart of our artistic vision; DOWN TO EARTH affirms art’s critical role in the economic, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers. Outdoor creations, international contemporary circus, and in-situ participatory performances are ideal means of reaching new audiences: they are powerful expressions of communal space, championing public assembly and democratizing access to the urban commons. DOWN TO EARTH is a crucible of ideas in action, forging connections between community organizations and CUNY Stages.
The festival also proposes a novel reading of public spaces, demonstrating how they can be used and understood. This mirrors the ways social and political action can produce unexpected effects, insights, and actions. We’re focusing on how artistic presence transforms the experience of place and the powerful role of outdoor creation in transforming communities and spaces.
DOWN TO EARTH seeks to expand access to cultural expression, privilege public assembly, and combat the injustices inherent in socio-economic exclusion. Central to the festival’s mission is our commitment to dismantling cultural barriers by offering free programs for students, youth, immigrant communities, and families. By attracting a diverse public to free outdoor arts and in-situ performances that are accessible and inviting, the festival will redress the shortcomings of an expensive system of cultural dissemination.
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The 2025 inaugural Festival Program, August 29–September 7, 2025, features seven international productions, workshops, interactive events; eight presentations of PRELUDE, a festival-within-a-festival, focusing on artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater, dance, and interdisciplinary and mediatized performance; and a symposium that explores themes of migration, diversity, social justice, theater as a tool of resistance, intergenerational alliance, climate change, and our imperiled democracy. Performances will be held across various New York City parks and public spaces.
Seven international productions: multidisciplinary performance, contemporary circus, and an opera installation
Soka Tira Osoa by Compagnie Basinga, with French-Congolese high-wire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga (France), a performance that turns tightrope walking into a collaboration between artist and audience
Ancrage and SenCirk Duo, from Senegal‘s only circus troupe, SenCirk, founded by former street child Modou Touré, explores themes including migration and living in harmony with nature
Traces by Théâtre de l’Entrouvert’s Élise Vigneron (France), a plastic and choreographic project representing a human community, through the image of a choir made of feet molded out of ice
ARCH, UK-based studio Kaleider’s operatic work of installation art, in which the performers struggle to build a freestanding arch out of blocks of concrete and ice
HIT OUT by Parini Secondo (Italy), a choreographic and musical composition wherein a jump rope is repurposed as a rhythmic and choreographic percussive instrument
SANTE! by Le Cirque Kikasse (Quebec, Canada), a dynamic circus show featuring extreme acrobatics and breathtaking balancing acts, whose stage is an extraordinary food truck
Poetic Consultations, a Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris, and DOWN TO EARTH Festival initiative, in two boroughs and six languages
PRELUDE, a Festival-within-a-Festival: site-specific performances with artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater, dance, and interdisciplinary and mediatized performance:
Endsieg: The Second Coming, an English language reading of a new play by Elfriede Jelinek, featuring Nicole Ansari-Cox and directed by Milo Rau
In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, by Bernard-Marie Koltès, directed by translator Amin Efrain (Iran/US), with Ismail ibn Conner and Tony Torn
FLEXN, PAINTN, SPEAKN, with Quamaine Daniels and Reggie Gray
tvvo:id: a/Live in NYC + Ukraine, the DOWN TO EARTH and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival collaboration with Kyiv Contemporary Music Days
Nannies of New York City, Katie Brook and Katiana Rangel
Solidarność, a town hall encounter in a city park
Turtle Island and Muskrat, A Lenape creation story of Turtle Island and theatrical piece conceived by Eagle Project. Written and performed by Opalanietet, with music by Danielle Jagelski. Directed by Ash Marinaccio
Class Dismissed: A Pataphysical Lecture, a participatory event directed and performed by Daniel Irizarry and written by Robert Lyons.
Town Hall: Milo Rau’s RESISTANCE NOW, a collective conversation that seeks to foster international collaborative solidarity in the face of global threats to artistic freedom, The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center CUNY
Symposium: In Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly, an all-day conference on theater and performing arts in public spaces, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) at LaGuardia Community College
Festival Partners:
Culture Lab LIC, Long Island City
New York City Parks: Marcus Garvey Park; Fort Greene Park; Inwood Hill Park; Prospect Park; Tompkins Square Park
CUNY Stages Theaters: LaGuardia Community College
The Clemente Center, a Puerto Rican and Latinx Cultural Space, Lower East Side
Agger Fish Building, Brooklyn Navy Yard
French Cultural Services and Villa Albertine
Québec Government Office in New York
Instituto Italiana di Cultura
Milo Rau, The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen)
Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris, France
Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPI)
NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment
SCHEDULE
https://www.downtoearthfestival.org/calendar
August 30, 2025
- 2:30 pm + 5:30 pm: Turtle Island & Muskrat (PRELUDE), Inwood Hill Park
- 5:30 pm: HIT OUT, Parini Secondo (Italy), Culture Lab LIC
August 31, 2025
- 3:00 pm: Traces, Théâtre de l’Entrouvert (France), The Bushwick Starr
- 3:00 pm: tvvo:id: A/Live in New York + Ukraine (PRELUDE), Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Education Center
- 6:30 pm: HIT OUT, Parini Secondo (Italy), Culture Lab LIC
September 1, 2025
4:00 pm: Nannies of New York City (PRELUDE), 2 Rector Street, Financial District
September 2, 2025
2:00 pm: Milo Rau’s RESISTANCE NOW! (Town Hall), Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
6:00 pm: Endsieg: The Second Coming by Elfriede Jelinek, a reading with Nicole Ansari-Cox, directed by Milo Rau (PRELUDE), Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
September 3, 2025
9:00 am – 6:00 pm: Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly (Symposium), LaGuardia Community College.
12:00 pm: SANTÉ!, Le Cirque Kikasse (Québec, Canada), Brooklyn Commons Park
3:00 pm: SenCirk Duo, SenCirk (Senegal), LaGuardia Community College Courtyard
7:00 pm: Ancrage, SenCirk (Senegal), LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Mainstage Theater
September 4, 2025
6:00 pm: Soka Tira Osoa, Compagnie Basinga and French-Congolese high wire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga (France), Pier 16 Peck Slip, South Street Seaport Square
6:30 pm: SANTÉ!, Le Cirque Kikasse (Québec, Canada), Culture Lab LIC
3:00 pm: Poetic Consultations, a Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris & DOWN TO EARTH Festival initiative, McNally Jackson’s Seaport outpost, 4 Fulton St. bet. Front St.& South St.
September 5, 2025
3:00 pm: SANTÉ!, Le Cirque Kikasse (Québec, Canada), LaGuardia Community Greenway (29th Street between Skillman to 47th Avenues)
4:00 pm + 7:00 pm: SenCirk Duo, SenCirk (Senegal), Marcus Garvey Park, Richard Rodgers Amphitheater
4:00 pm – 7:00 pm: Poetic Consultations, a Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris, and DOWN TO EARTH Festival initiative (France), Marcus Garvey Park, Richard Rodgers Amphitheater
7:00 pm: In the Solitude of Cotton Fields by Bernard-Marie Koltès (PRELUDE), Hudson River Park
September 6, 2025
11:00 am: Solidarność by Meropi Peponides and Beto O’Byrne (PRELUDE), Fort Greene Park
1:00 pm: HIT OUT, Parini Secondo (Italy), Fort Greene Park
4:00 pm: Solidarność by Meropi Peponides and Beto O’Byrne (PRELUDE), Tompkins Square Park
7:00 pm: ARCH, Kaleider (UK), Green-Wood Cemetery
7:30 pm: In the Solitude of Cotton Fields by Bernard-Marie Koltès (PRELUDE), Hudson River Park
September 7, 2025
12:30–3:00 pm HIT OUT, Parini Secondo (Italy); Class Dismissed: A Pataphysical Lecture, Danel Irizarry and Robert Lyons (PRELUDE), FLEXN, PAINTN, SPEAKN, Quamaine Daniels and Reggie Gray (PRELUDE); Agger Fish Building, Brooklyn Navy Yard
3:00 pm: Traces, Théâtre de l’Entrouvert (France), Hudson River Park, Pier 84
7:00 pm: ARCH, Kaleider (UK), Green-Wood Cemetery
7:30 pm: In the Solitude of Cotton Fields by Bernard-Marie Koltès (PRELUDE), Hudson River Park
About the Festival
The MESTC DOWN TO EARTH Festival is committed to serving a diverse cross-section of New York City’s population, with a focus on students, youth, immigrant communities, and families, especially those who are underserved by traditional cultural institutions. These are our primary organizational and project-specific audiences. By offering free programming, we aim to dismantle barriers to cultural access and bring world-class contemporary circus and outdoor arts directly to where communities live, learn, and gather.
Our programming is designed to be inclusive, accessible, and welcoming. By staging performances in public spaces—such as NYC parks and community-centered venues—we foster an environment that invites participation from audiences of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. The festival emphasizes engagement over exclusivity, offering dynamic, unconventional presentations that resonate with today’s culturally curious audiences.
“There’s no place like Queens when it comes to art and culture,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. “The DOWN TO EARTH Festival goes even further by partnering with community organizations to bring culture directly to our communities. I hope our families will enjoy the festivities they have planned for us.”
“Lower Manhattan’s streets and waterfronts are our greatest stage, and the DOWN TO EARTH Festival shows what happens when we bring world-class art back into the public square—free, open, and for everyone. Thank you to the CUNY Graduate Center and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, along with partners like The Clemente, Hudson River Park, and the South Street Seaport Museum, for democratizing culture and strengthening community. I encourage New Yorkers to come see these performances and experience how public space can inspire assembly, joy, and solidarity.” — Council Member Christopher Marte
“Brooklyn is a creative engine, and innovative performance in public spaces keeps our borough at the forefront of inventiveness and accessibility,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. “Thank you to the Graduate Center CUNY and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center for bringing public performing arts productions to our city through the DOWN TO EARTH Festival. I encourage all Brooklynites to view ARCH by Kaleider at Green-Wood Cemetery on September 6 and 7.”
In opposition to NYC’s current performing arts landscape, where high costs have reduced many venues to rental facilities or limited seasons, DOWN TO EARTH articulates a different approach. With the majority of work presented in public spaces, our strategy focuses on sharing resources and building coalitions with CUNY Stages, NYC parks, innovative community organizations like Bushwick Starr, among other partners. We plan to unite these spaces through joint presentations in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, fostering visibility and cooperation, while focusing on access for students, families, and a variety of theater audiences. By leveraging the networks of institutions like LaGuardia Community College, Green-Wood Cemetery, and the South Street Seaport Museum, we connect with built-in audiences and educational outreach programs that extend our reach organically.
For this festival, we focus on communities in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens through strategic partnerships in underfunded areas, and community organizations with established audiences.
Festival Co-Directors: Elena V. Siyanko & Frank Hentschker. Detailed schedule of the festival’s programs and dates, on the festival’s website: https://www.downtoearthfestival.org/calendar
About Martin E. Segal Theater (METC), CUNY Graduate Center
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY is home to theater artists, scholars, students, managers, and local and international performance communities. It provides a supportive environment for conversation; open exchange; and the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts. The Center presents a wide variety of free public programs year round, which feature leading national and international artists, scholars, and arts professionals and serve to enrich the lives of CUNY’s constituent communities across New York City.
The annual PRELUDE festival, presented at The Graduate Center CUNY for over 20 years, has been dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater, dance, and interdisciplinary and mediatized performance. PRELUDE offers an array of short performances, readings, and screenings. It is a completely free survey of the current New York moment and the work being prepared for the next season and beyond. PRELUDE is a place to discover the voices shaping the future of theater and performance in NYC, providing an essential shared space to observe, engage, commune, and critique.
Segal Center programs like PRELUDE (New York City playwrights, directors and ensemble showing work in progress), Global World Voices Festival (international playwrights festival), the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance have been ambitious in scale, epic in scope, challenging in form, controversial in subject matter, experimental in concept, and/or unabashed in their theatricality. The Center serves as a resource center for CUNY, for New York City, and for the nation; and disseminates the results of its activities to the scholarly community and to the world at large through publications, conferences, and exhibitions. The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY, occupies a place unlike any other organization in New York City: in the space between public arts presenter, academic publisher, and research nexus. For more than 20 years, the Segal Center has served as a bridge between the academic and professional performing arts communities by fostering dialogue between playwrights, directors, designers, choreographers, filmmakers, critics, and academics from New York and around the world.
Having founded The World Voices Festival in 2004 and presented over 100 works for the screen by theater artists from over 50 countries in 2022 as part of the 7th Segal Center Film Festival, the MESTC and its leadership are no strangers to festival creation. In 2025, MESTC will present the inaugural program of the city-wide international performing arts Down to Earth Festival, dedicated to multidisciplinary performance, contemporary theater, outdoor arts, and new circus, integrated into city streets, parks and urban spaces.
Acknowledgement and Support
DOWN TO EARTH Festival would not be possible without the civic commitment and leadership gift of Marvin A. Carlson, the distinguished theater historian and CUNY Graduate Center Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Performance. Additional funding is provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, the Zankel Music Fund, Distracted Globe Foundation, Villa Albertine and a Theatre & New Forms grant; Hydro-Québec Energy Services and Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPI); Québec Government Office in New York, Institut français, Italian Ministry of Culture; Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation, Lucille Lortel Foundation, and several generous individuals.
Program of DOWN TO EARTH International Festival of Multidisciplinary Performance
Compagnie BASINGA (France) Soka Tira Osoa – September 4 @ South Street Seaport, Pier 16, Peck Slip
Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga is one of the world’s few female artists walking the high wire. Basinga’s Soka Tira Osoa (literally “pulling the rope”) takes its name from the traditional “tug of war,” a sport in which two teams pull on the opposite ends of a rope, each trying to drag the other team across a line drawn in the middle. Basinga, however, turns the experience into a collaboration between the artists and audience-participants. Then Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga performs her poetic, breathless, spectacular balancing act, accompanied by live musicians: “It takes many to be many.” Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga will carry out her breathtaking crossing in the South Street Seaport’s historic waterfront district, a feat of balance and imbalance, aided by her audience and the pop-up band’s auditory “ground track.”
Basinga’s artistic practices are inseparable from the artist’s social mandate. One of the world’s rare women high-wire performers, Bongonga has been organizing collective adventure skywalk aerial performances without a harness for over a decade. Wherever Basinga performs, she enlists the help of up to sixty local volunteers to stabilize the complex structure supporting the tightrope and help create a ceremony grounded in circus arts that combines music, acrobatics, and mutual trust. Beyond the company’s performances, Basinga conducts cultural and artistic projects in various settings, from hospitals to prisons, offering workshops in tightrope walking, costume design, and photography to promote personal development.
SenCirk (Senegal) Sencirk Duo and Ancrage (“anchoring”) circus-dance-acrobatic-balance-inspired performances about identity and returning to one’s roots
September 3, 2025. SenCirk Duo, by SenCirk, an outdoor version, @ LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) at LaGuardia Community College Courtyard; September 3, 2025. Ancrage, by SenCirk @ LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) Mainstage Theater; September 5, 2025, SenCirk Duo by Cirque SenCirk @ Marcus Garvey Park, Richard Rodgers Amphitheater
In Ancrage (anchoring), the indoor version, and Sencirk Duo (an outdoor version), a man awakens and encounters an alien being. Performed by two acrobats, Modou Fata Touré and Ibrahima Camara, the two measure, observe and confront each other, then mutually tame each other. When they find their anchorage, a world arises where nature and man merge, take root in each other, and harmony is created. Modou Fata Touré questions Europe and Africa: What if contemporary circus was not only European, and what if African circus was not exclusively traditional? Through Ancrage, Modou and Ibrahima reclaim the circus’s African identity. The local materials of Senegal—bags of rice, traditional brooms, wooden ladders—join raw materials like earth, sand, aluminum, and straw. SenCirk’s unique approach shares personal stories that West Africans—and others—can relate to, from clandestine migration to Europe to the experience of living as a talibé runaway. Founded in 2009 by Modou Fata Touré, SenCirk is Senegal’s first circus organization, encompassing a company, school, and performance tent. Touré, who as a teenager discovered circus arts at Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör, transformed himself from a child beggar to a leading figure in contemporary African circus. Rather than pursuing a career in Europe, he returned home to establish SenCirk, which uniquely blends traditional Senegalese culture with contemporary circus arts. The company employs a dozen professional artists from diverse backgrounds and provides free workshops at shelters for street children and women. SenCirk maintains its African identity by crafting equipment from local materials and training future circus professionals while supporting children in need throughout Dakar.
Studio Kaleider (UK) ARCH, an installation opera. Saturday, September 6 at 7 :00 pm; Sunday, September 7 at 7:00 pm, with MasterVoices Chorus @ Green-Wood Cemetery
Kaleider’s ARCH is an attempt to build a freestanding arch, made two-thirds of concrete and one-third of ice, witnessed by a vigilant choir of human voices. Touching audiences with themes of death, renewal, and hope, ARCH points towards the extraordinary, yet flawed, systems humans create: language, economies, architectures, democracies—and, inevitably, to the impact of these systems on our ecosystem and ourselves. Kaleider’s ARCH event unfolds under the open skies, a thought-provoking performance enchantingly accompanied by the watchful singers. A languageless score by Verity Standen accompanies a relentlessly physical performance, at times meditative, at others arresting and highly charged. During the performance, singers unobtrusively seated among the audience join the core singers’ voices, enlarging the impassioned focus on the task, and blurring the boundaries between performers and witnesses. Each singer leads a group in a different harmony, which interweaves with the others. https://kaleider.com/portfolio/arch/
Elise Vigneron, Théâtre de L’Entrouvert (France), Traces, Inhabiting the World
Sunday, August 31, @ Bushwick Starr (with a 2-day workshop preceding the performance); Sunday, September 7, @ Hudson River Park, Pier 84 (with a 2-day workshop preceding the performance)
A participatory project/performance by Elise Vigneron with a group of up to 40 people, Traces represents a human community, featuring up to 30 participants of all ages, through the image of a choir made of ice feet. A plastic and choreographic project that connects us and makes us sensitive to the world we live in. Through an ephemeral and collective performance conceived for a public space, Elise Vigneron, in collaboration with circus artist Eleonora Gimenez, questions the ecological stakes and the traces left by human beings as they pass through the world. The participants, their feet cast in ice by the artistic team, are the actors of this choreographed installation. The singularity of each member, their bodies, and their individual stories form a chorus that fosters the discovery of their collective identity. The ice mirrors the fragility of the world and its transformation into water, the ephemeral nature of human experience and narrative. Trained in visual arts, theater, and circus, Elise Vigneron attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette de Charleville-Mézières and graduated with honors in 2005. From 2005 to 2011, she worked as a puppeteer and set designer for the company Le Théâtre de Nuit, directed by Aurélie Morin. She then joined the Vélo Théâtre, where she created the solo work Traversées, before founding Théâtre de L’Entrouvert in 2010. Since then, she has created many works, at her own theater and in association with Espace Jéliote, TJP, CDN Strasbourg Grand-Est, Marseille’s Théâtre du Gymnase, for the 2019 Avignon Festival, Théâtre du Bois de l’Aune in Aix-en-Provence, the Théâtre Joliette in Marseille, among others. https://lentrouvert.com/en/lands/
Le Cirque Kikasse, Quebec (Canada) SANTÉ!
September 3 @ Brooklyn Commons Park, Downtown Brooklyn; September 4, @ Culture LAB LIC; September 5, @ LaGuardia Community Greenway, Queens
SANTÉ! by Cirque Kikasse is a dynamic circus show with high-level acrobatics, contagious energy, and breathtaking balancing acts . . . all on their extraordinary food truck! The troupe transforms tables and chairs into a balancing tower 30 feet in the air, creating comic chaos as they clean their truck and trampoline and flood the area with popcorn. SANTÉ! is a light-hearted tour de force sure to tickle your inner child and thrill your kids. Contemporary circus is an infectious performance art hybrid, employing elements of acrobatics, theater, music, comedy, and improvisation to fashion narrative and engage audiences of all ages and backgrounds. It expands access to cultural expression, encourages public assembly, and unifies communities.
Parini Secondo (Italy) HIT OUT a choreographic and musical composition built around the jump rope repurposed as a rhythmic and choreographic percussive instrument
August 30, 31 @ Culture LAB, Long Island City; September 6 @ Fort Greene Park; September 7 @ Agger Fish Building, Brooklyn Navy Yard
In the dual athletic and rhythmic nature of the jump rope, with HIT OUT Parini Secondo elevates the intimate practice of training into a performative action: the hammering succession of rope strokes morphs into the drumbeat of rebellion against those forces that would have us lie motionless on the ground with our eyes closed. Parini Secondo HIT OUT focuses attention on the sound produced by rope skipping, dissecting its timbral possibilities. The jumpers on stage perform a rhythmic and at the same time choreographic score in which single-unders, side-swings, and double-unders are both athletic and musical elements: combined with voice and synthetic sounds, they harmonize into a true hit. To jump, at once limping and flying, is a rebellion against gravity, and the pounding succession of rope strokes is the echo of this rebellion. With time, its meaning fades away. The error suddenly happens and reminds us of the origin of our dissent: from the awareness of our weight, the reason for the uprising can be powerfully renewed.
Théâtre de la Ville and DOWN TO EARTH Collaboration, Poetic Consultations. Presented in English, Spanish, French, Urdu, Farsi, and Chinese. Featuring NYC-based and Théâtre de la Ville artists
September 4, at the plaza in front of McNally Jackson, South Street Seaport; September 5, Marcus Garvey Park, Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Harlem
Poetic Consultations offers one-on-one, 20-minute conversations between an artist and a member of the public, starting with a simple question “How are you?” Based on the answer, a poem, a dance, or a piece of music is selected by the artist as a “poetic prescription” and is read or performed. The consultations are carried out by a collection of NYC and Paris-based artists. The individual meetings are based on listening; on time given to the other; on a moment to share life, poetry, music, and movement. Poetic Consultations is a new practice that rethinks the relationship between the public and the performer, imagined by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Director of the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, and playwright, poet, and novelist Fabrice Melquiot.
Milo Rau’s RESISTANCE NOW! A town-hall style conversation that seeks to foster international collaborative solidarity in the face of global threats to artistic freedom September 2, @ The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center CUNY
As part of his RESISTANCE NOW! project Rau will be part of a panel with Tania Bruguera and Richard Schechner and in two conversations, one with Frank Hentschker and one with Carol Martin. Following will be a reading of Elfriede Jelinke’s Endsieg: The Second Coming, with actor Nicole Ansari. The town hall will introduce attendees to Rau’s School of Resistance, a project that fosters international collaborative solidarity in the face of global threats to artistic freedom. DOWN TO EARTH brings artists, activists, researchers, philosophers, politicians, and local guests into the conversation to share their visions of how to participate in a global, solidarity-based response to this charged contemporary moment. The day’s events are free and open to the public. It is co-produced by the Martin E. Segal Center and Milo Rau’s Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna and part of RESISTANCE NOW TOGETHER.
Symposium: In Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly, A one-day conference on performing arts in public space.
September 3, @ LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) at LaGuardia Community College. For artists, producers, programmers, funders, researchers, and public sector and private development professionals.
In Via Publica calls civic actors from the arts and culture, public administration, private development, and the academy to convene and ask: what many vital roles poetics must play in public spaces in the US today—from restoring safety and play to contested and conflicted environments to enriching shared spaces with consumption-free beauty and wonder to fostering social cohesion across differences to bolstering democratic participation and engagement. Together, we will shed light on the unique impacts that are made possible when new creations by performing artists making work for public spaces are centered within professional performing arts presenting practices; democratic and civic engagement endeavors; city branding/tourism campaigns; and creative placemaking efforts. Consistent with its holistic vision, the conference will take place on the campus of LaGuardia Community College; include an outdoor free performance by DTE Festival artists from the Senegalese company Sencirk; and conclude with the official launch of CUNY Stages, a consortium of venues at CUNY campuses across all boroughs. The Segal Center will publish a written report with findings from the Symposium. In Via Publica is offered in collaboration with Wikler Arts. Official Site: downtoearthfestival.org