Who we are
Based in New York City, Elena Siyanko is an internationally recognized leader in the art and culture sector, known for her commitment to artists in visual and performing arts practices nationally and internationally.
Veteran arts curator, Elena Siyanko serves as Co-Director and Curator of Down to Earth, New York City’s first global festival of artistic creation in public spaces. 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.
Contemporary cirque and in-situ street arts represent more than performance—they’re a radical reimagining of public space. Dedicated to innovative expression and audience participation, these art forms stand as a powerful defense of communal spaces, championing public assembly and democratizing access to our shared urban commons. Citizen expression beats at the heart of the festival’s artistic vision. Down to Earth Festival serves as a crucible, forging connections between community organizations, NYC Parks, museums, cemeteries, and CUNY Stages, affirming art’s critical role in the economic, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers.
Most recently, from 2019 until December 2024, as the Inaugural Artistic and Executive Director of PS21/Center for Contemporary Performance, Elena Siyanko guided PS21’s successful transition to a new state-of-the-art theater facility. She built the organizational and programmatic infrastructure from the ground up, establishing the complete operational framework including strategic and programmatic vision, fundraising campaigns, financial management, and comprehensive oversight of artistic programming, staff, and facilities. Siyanko programmed an annual season of 24 productions, developmental residencies, and over 35 free and low-cost educational and community activities presented on two stages, across the expansive grounds, and in the surrounding communities. New York Times critic Jason Farago called PS21 under Siyanko’s direction “a country theater that outclasses most of Manhattan.”
An internationally recognized curator and producer, she brought more than 100 distinct productions to PS21, featuring artists and companies representing 15 countries. She produced new multidisciplinary projects and performances in public spaces, curated more than 220 events for diverse audiences, established collaborations with regional, national, and international organizations, and hosted over 30 artists’ residencies for projects in dance, music, contemporary performance, and theater. Siyanko has collaborated with a broad range of American and international artists across disciplines, including Alarm Will Sound; Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, Amir El Saffar; Kate Valk; Jim Fletcher; Arturo O’Farrill; Camille A. Brown, Mark Morris Dance Group; Paul Taylor Dance Company; Kyle Marshall, Paola Prestini; Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Davóne Tines, Louisa Proske, Kate Soper, Doug Fitch, Claire Chase, Marcos Balter, Doug Cuomo, Conrad Tao, principal musicians of the New York Philharmonic, members of American Modern Opera Company and International Contemporary Ensemble, Toshiki Okada, and Kuro Tanino, Liz Gerring, Philippe Quesne, Gisèle Vienne, Tiago Rodrigues, among many others.
Among the distinguished works Siyanko has brought to the US are: Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, the cautionary political drama by Festival d’Avignon artistic director Tiago Rodrigues. US premiere, July 2024; ANIMA – The only North American staging of this immersive multidisciplinary performance about earth’s climate future by visual artist/photographer and Prix Duchamp finalist Noémie Goudal & theater director Maëlle Poesy, 2023; L’Etang (The Pond) – Choreographer Gisèle Vienne‘s scintillating adaptation of Robert Walser’s family drama, with Pina Bausch luminary Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel, the English language US premiere; Save the Last Dance for Me, by Biennale de la Danza Golden Lion Alessandro Sciarroni, US premiere and exclusive North American staging, 2023; Farm Fatale, Philippe Quesne‘s eco-futurist fable marries activism and art in an indelible confrontation with environmental apocalypse, North American premiere and exclusive North American staging, 2022; Re:Incarnation by QDance and Qudus Onikeku, from Lagos, Nigeria, US premiere and exclusive US staging, 2022; Hatched Ensemble, South African activist-choreographer Mamela Nyanza‘s deconstruction of conventional ideas about identity, culture, and art, season-opening production, US premiere and exclusive US staging, May 2025.
Performing artists and companies from the Global South, and especially Africa, constituted a vital part of Siyanko’s programming. Despite the hurdles of the US visa process for these performers, she brought performances from these regions, many of which addressed urgent issues of our time, including climate change, migration, social justice, and the marginalizing of cultures and communities. In 2022, Siyanko presented the US premiere of re:Incarnation by QDance and Qudis Onikeku, from Lagos, Nigeria; 2023 saw the North American premiere of Amoukanama Circus’s FA, performed by nine Guinean dancers and musicians; and in 2024, the US premiere of Le sacre de Lila, Ismaël Mouaraki’s distillation of the Moroccan nocturnal ritual of Lila.
The artists’ residencies Siyanko established focused on supporting groundbreaking women artists creating multidisciplinary and often unclassifiable work, such as last summer’s NOLI TIMERE, by choreographer Rebecca Lazier and sculptor Janet Echelman. This work synthesizes experimental dance, avant-garde circus, engineering, art installation, music, public sculpture, and social practice. Developed at PS21, NOLI TIMERE will tour nationally and internationally in 2025-2026. As a festival producer, Siyanko maintained a balance between emerging artists and new work from well-established companies, such as Mark Morris Dance Group, American Ballet Theater, and Paul Taylor Dance Company. In 2021, the latter reconstructed Kurt Jooss’s 1932 anti-war masterpiece The Green Table, a seminal work for our time.
Siyanko successfully produced artists and engagements with many leading national presenting organizations, overseeing planning, scheduling, and coordination between presenting partners. These included the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Festival TransAmériques, FuseBox, Peak Performances, Central Park SummerStage, and Under the Radar Festival. She also established partnerships and initiated co-presentations with leading international presenters and festivals, such as Festival d’Avignon, Villa Albertine, TOHU Montreal, L’Alliance New York Crossing the Line Festival, and New York Live Arts, among others.
A cornerstone of Siyanko’s tenure at PS21 was the introduction of PS21 PATHWAYS, an initiative of creative placemaking and co-programming through partnerships with 27 organizations. This program created new contexts for presenting challenging work while engaging diverse audiences. Through PS21 collaborations with more than two dozen local and regional partners—ranging from organizations serving at-risk youth to environmental groups, town governments, and others—visionary artists made intimate contact with audiences in schools, churches, libraries, city parks, village streets, farms, and parking lots. PATHWAYS became a counterweight to the restrictive, cost-prohibitive paradigm that is the rule throughout the country. Through this initiative, Siyanko popularized international contemporary circus, in situ, and street arts, bringing US and North American premieres and company debuts of Cirk La Putyka (Czech Republic), CIRCA (Australia), Compagnie Libertivore and Fanny Soriano, Cie GALMAE, Compagnie Basinga (France), Cirque Amoukanama (Guinea), SenCirk (Senegal), and The Moles by Philippe Quesne. 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.
Organizational Leadership
Siyanko led PS21’s organizational transformation and transition to the new state-of-the-art facility following founder’s passing, building comprehensive infrastructure including staff, audience base, Board of Directors, and artistic programming while establishing national and international reputation. She staffed and managed nine-person cross-functional team overseeing communications, fundraising, production, and operations across dual-stage venue and 100-acre campus, while extending programming into local communities.
Among Siyanko’s many landmark achievements at PS21 are recruiting and cultivating new, engaged board members; building from scratch a comprehensive fundraising program; vastly increasing individual giving, establishing the flourishing Producers Circle, and securing grants from private foundations as well as US and international government agencies. Under her direction, PS21’s budget doubled in less than five years. Siyanko’s coalition-building approach and laser focus on contributed income, drove the organization’s success in building a dedicated cohort of audiences and patrons. She succeeded in generating 90% new contributed revenue after opening the new state-of-the-art theater, growing the highest single annual annual individual gift from $10,000 in 2019 to $125,000 in 2024.
The increased funding made it possible to expand programming to more than 20 productions and over 50 free and low-cost community events per season, which attracted ever-larger audiences and dedicated supporters. This also enabled the launch of a year-round residency program while continually reducing average ticket prices—which fell to their historic low of $25 in 2024. These included the organization’s first New York State Council on the Arts facilities grants, totaling within one year $315,000, for improvements to the Pavilion Theater and renovations of the Artists Residence.
From 2013 to 2019, Siyanko served as Director of Advancement Initiatives at the Clark Art Institute, an art museum and a distinguished center for research and higher education. Based in New York City, she worked with the Clark director and NYC-based trustees on major new exhibition funding initiatives after the museum’s significant expansion, which included a new building designed by Tadao Ando and the renovation of two existing buildings by Annabelle Selldorf. At the Clark, Siyanko established and developed programs linking exhibitions to current social and cultural concerns, including the role of arts in contemporary politics, evolving views of nature, and the intersections of old and new art forms, such as painting, contemporary music, and film. She led initiatives to bring the Clark and the surrounding community closer by introducing free modern music series and large-scale season-ending festivals, where the museum’s distinctive architecture was integrated with performance.
Previously, Siyanko served as Director of Marketing and Business Development at Louise Blouin Media, focusing on art, lifestyle, and culture; was Associate Director for Cultural Development at Bard College; served as Executive Director of Monadnock Music, a chamber music festival known for pioneering works of American composers (ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award); and founded an international art consultancy and producing agency, Red Osmosis. Elena Siyanko holds degrees from Columbia University (MA, Arts Administration in the consortium of the School of the Arts, the Business School, and the Law School) and Mount Holyoke College (BA, Asian Studies).