2025, “Down to Earth,” NYC’s first international festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces. Photo: Highwire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga of Compagnie Basinga

Veteran arts curator, Elena Siyanko serves as Co-Director of DOWN TO EARTH, New York City’s first international festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces. She guides the concept and international programming and oversees strategic partnerships and fundraising for the inaugural 2025 Festival program.      

DOWN TO EARTH, August 29 – September 7, 2025

Down to Earth brings world-class international performance, contemporary circus, and in-situ performances—absolutely free—directly to New York City’s vibrant, diverse communities. An initiative that democratizes cultural expression, the inaugural festival will take place September 2–7, 2025. Conceived by The CUNY Graduate Center, The Martin E. Segal Theatre serves as the festival’s producer, underwriter, and fiscal agent.

Partnering with NYC parks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens and working collaboratively with more than 10 dynamic cultural and community organizations, we are staging performances and workshops across multiple urban spaces. Contemporary circus and in-situ street arts are ideal means of reaching new audiences: they represent more than performance and are a radical reimagining of public space. Dedicated to innovative expression and audience participation, these art forms stand as a powerful assertion of communal space, championing public assembly and democratizing access to our shared urban commons. Citizen expression beats at the heart of our artistic vision. Down to Earth serves as a crucible, forging connections between community organizations and CUNY Stages, affirming art’s critical role in the economic, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers.

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 and subsidized programs for students, youth, immigrant communities, and families. By attracting a diverse public to free street arts and in-situ performances that are accessible and inviting, the festival will redress the shortcomings of an expensive system of cultural dissemination.

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 takes a novel approach. With the majority of work presented in public spaces, our strategy focuses on sharing resources and building coalitions with CUNY Stages, NYC parks, and The Coalition of Theaters of Color, among other organizations. 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 theatre audiences.

DOWN TO EARTH, Inaugural Festival Program, September 2–7, 2025

The 2025 Festival features six international productions, workshops, interactive events, and two symposia that explore themes of migration, diversity, social justice, theatre as a tool of resistance, intergenerational alliance, climate change, and democracy. Performances will be held across various New York City parks and public spaces featuring leading in-situ artists and companies, international contemporary circus, multidisciplinary performance, and NYC-based artists and activists.

Partners:

The Coalition of Theaters of Color (CTC)
The Clemente Center, a Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural space, Lower East Side
The Alliance of Teatros Latinos NY
South Street Seaport Museum
New York City Parks: Hudson River Park; Marcus Garvey Historic Harlem Park
CUNY Stages Theaters
New York City’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)
French Cultural Services and Villa Albertine
Institut Français
Milo Rau, The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen)
Thomas Oberender, ex officio Director of Berlin Festspiele
Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris, France

The NYC Down to Earth Festival draws its inspiration and name from the groundbreaking 2020 Berlin Festspiele project, conceived and curated by Thomas Oberender.

Festival Program

• Seven international productions: multidisciplinary creations, contemporary circus, in-situ, and street arts, including Soka Tira Osoa by Cie BASINGA, with high wire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga (France); Ancrage, from Senegal‘s only circus troupe, SenCirk, founded by former street child Modou Touré; and Arch, UK-based production 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.
• PRELUDE Festival-within-a-Festival, dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary, and mediatized performance
• “Poetic Consultations“, three boroughs, five languages, in partnership with Τhéâtre de la Ville
• Milo Rau’s RESISTANCE NOW!, a symposium with Elfriede Jelinek, Nicole Ansari, Édouard Louis, Laurie Anderson, and others
• “In Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly,” a conference on theatre and performing arts in public spaces.

Festival Co-Directors: 

Frank Hentschker (MESTC), Founder and co-Director, fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu
Elena V. Siyanko, Founder and co-Director, esiyanko@gc.cuny.edu
Advisor to the festival, Ruth Wikler: ruth@wiklerarts.com.

Outdoor Arts International Programming and Strategic Planning Expertise

Elena Siyanko, founder and Co-Director of Down-to-Earth Festival, is a highly experienced curator, fundraiser, and presenter of multi-arts programming, public art, and community engagement initiatives that unfold in both traditional and non-traditional performance spaces.

A regular attendee of international arts festivals in Europe and Latin America, Siyanko has witnessed the power of creative performance to shape the physical and social character of outdoor spaces. Over the past five years, she has been in the vanguard of curators popularizing international contemporary circus and in-situ multidisciplinary performance through her work as the inaugural Executive and Artistic Director of PS21/Center for Contemporary Performance (2019-2024). Through her curation, she has brought large-scale outdoor spectacles developed during residencies and hosted dozens of North American premieres and company debuts from renowned artists and productions, including:

Anima – The only North American staging of this immersive multidisciplinary performance installation about earth’s climate future by visual artist/photographer and Prix Duchamp finalist Noémie Goudal and theater director Maëlle Poésy, featuring photography, large-scale projected video, electronic music, and live aerial performance; following its 2022 premiere at Festival d’Avignon and sold-out runs at Tate Modern Turbine Hall and the 2023 Venice Biennial; Noli Timere – A synthesis of experimental dance, avant-garde circus, art installation, music, and social practice created by Guggenheim Fellows choreographer Rebecca Lazier and sculptor Janet Echelman; FA (“To Come”) by Cirque Amoukanama from Guinea – The sole North American presentation of this moving personal story of migration and the quest for opportunity expressed through acrobatics, dance, and music; Runners by Cirk La Putyka – The US premiere of this politically astute, inventive, and rebellious circus troupe from the Czech Republic. This visually stunning metaphor for the frantic pace of modern life had previously been a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe; C’est pas là, c’est par là by Marseille-based South Korean artist Juhyung Lee – a playful, political, and participatory work inspired by street protests in Seoul, using an intricate string installation resembling a freshly woven spider’s web to transform passive spectators into problem-solving collectives. In addition to the more traditional and recognizable presences in public spaces, Siyanko also presented robots, machines and Moles, a band of larger-than-life creatures—equal parts nature mockumentary, punk-rock concert, and a window into a world devoid of human beings and language (created by artist Philippe Quesne). Among Siyanko’s other notable companies are CIRCA (Australia), Compagnie Libertivore and Fanny Soriano, Cie Galmae (France), and Cirque Kikasse (Quebec), and the upcoming US company debuts and North American premieres of Soka Tira Osoa by Compagnie Basinga (France), Arch by Kaleider (UK), and Ancrage by SenCirk (Senegal).

The Down-to-Earth festival’s concept dovetails with PS21 PATHWAYS, the popular initiative Siyanko introduced in the Hudson Valley in 2020, focused on placemaking and the importance of expanding cultural access and reclaiming public space through collaborative partnerships with communities, town governments, and environmental and youth-serving organizations. PATHWAYS created new contexts for presenting challenging work while engaging diverse audiences. Through collaborations with local and regional partners—ranging from organizations serving at-risk youth to environmental groups, town governments, and more—visionary artists connected intimately with audiences in schools, churches, libraries, city parks, village streets, farms, and parking lots. PATHWAYS became a counterweight to the restrictive, cost-prohibitive paradigm common throughout the country. By introducing large-scale outdoor spectacles and innovative collaborations, Siyanko increased attendance tenfold and raised PS21’s regional, national, and international profile.

About the Segal Theatre, the City University of New York (CUNY):  

The Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) of the City University of New York (CUNY) is a home to theatre artists, scholars, students, performing arts managers, and local and international performance communities. It provides a supportive environment for conversations, open exchange, and development of new ideas and work. For over two decades, the Center has presented a wide variety of free public programs year-round, featuring leading national and international artists, scholars, and arts professionals. The CUNY community represents over 250,000 students from New York and around the world.

The Segal Theatre Center brings substantial expertise in coordinating multi-venue cultural events and has been actively working to secure domestic and international funding. Our established partnerships with institutions across Brooklyn and Queens, including public parks, cemeteries, CUNY stages, and business improvement districts, provide the foundation for this ambitious project.

The Graduate Center, CUNY, of which the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is an integral part, is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York, (CUNY). An internationally recognized center for  advanced  studies  and  a national  model  for  public  doctoral  education,  the school offers more than thirty doctoral programs, as well as a number of master’s programs. Many of its  faculty  members  are  among  the  world’s  leading  scholars  in  their  respective  fields,  and  its alumni  hold  major  positions  in industry  and  government,  as well  as in academia. The Graduate Center is also home to thirty-one interdisciplinary research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns. Located in a landmark Fifth Avenue building, The Graduate Center has become a vital part of New York City’s intellectual and cultural life with its extensive array of public lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical events. Through its extensive public programs-─lectures, conferences, performances, exhibitions, and conversations—the Graduate Center makes a lively and enduring contribution to the intellectual and cultural life of New York City and affirms its commitment to the premise that knowledge is a public good. We consider diversity to be an integral part of our mission statement: “Committed to CUNY’s historic mission of educating the ‘children of the whole people,’ we work to provide access to doctoral education for diverse groups of highly talented students, including those who have been underrepresented in higher education.”