2020 RESIDENCIES

Alarm Will Sound. Alarm Will Sound spent a week workshopping compositions of the Franco-Haitian singer and percussionist Anaïs Maviel and Tyshan Sorey’s For George Lewis, the composer’s multi-textured symphonic homage to his musical mentor. The double album For George Lewis/Autoschediasms was released in 2021. Residency from August 1–8 2020

Experimental opera director Ashley Tata spent her PS21 residency creating Follow Me into the Field!, a site-specific environmental adaptation of Ten Thousand Birds, along our network of trails. The work’s instrumental sounds commingled with the calls of wildlife, the rustling of leaves, and the footfalls of musicians and spectators. Birdsong became music, instrumental sounds were transmuted into the sounds of nature, and the landscape into artistic space, blurring the lines between human creativity and natural phenomena. Residency in June 22–24 and July 30–August 8 2020.

Edisa Weeks/Delirious Dances, choreographer, educator, and director of DELIRIOUS DANCES, working on Three Rites, her epic exploration of the American guarantees of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Digging into—and taking digs at—the complex history of these rights and how they manifest in the body, Three Rites reckons with our past and present with poignancy and humor. During the residency, Weeks participated in a public online forum with James Powell, editor of The Tenth, members of Mislay Colony, and Perfect Ten and the Sylvia Center, two of PS21’s community partners who work with low-income youth of color, addressing the challenges of creating interactive theater during a pandemic and making the performing arts more accessible for Black artists. Residency from August 10–17, 2020

David Michalek and dancers from BodySonnet, Peridance, and Gallim Dance. With PS21’s architecture, meadows, and trails as a media canvas, dancers from BodySonnet, Peridance, and Gallim choreographing decelerated movement sequences for David Michalek’s D-Cell, a work that combines elements of exhibition and performance. The Neave Trio accompanies the dancers with music by Morton Feldman, whose compositions, which “seldom rise above a whisper . . . glacially slow and snowily soft (Alex Ross, the New Yorker),” provide perfect counterpoint. Residency from August 31–September 12, 2020

Modern Music Fest. Musicians—Sandbox Percussion, Calidore String Quartet, Timo Andres, Adam Tendler, Miranda Cuckson, Conor Hanick, and Conrad Tao 3 —enjoyed working respites from COVID restrictions through a series of short-term performance engagements and residencies: four musicians in residency for three nights. Pianist Adam Tendler wrote about the liberating effect of his residency at PS21 during this isolating time: “Thank you for the opportunity to visit PS21, both to perform and also to work during the residency. Both of those aspects of my time in Chatham, including the quiet isolation, were incredibly helpful to my spirit and to my deadlines! I left feeling replenished, fulfilled, and inspired to move onto the next thing. I also felt a little sad, because the experience was simply so positive, the facilities and gear so top-notch, the people so fantastic, and surroundings so perfect, that it was a wistful goodbye. But hopefully we can continue to scheme, plot and plan for future “somethings.” Everyone I talked to who experienced PS21 on Saturday night was blown away by the facility and its potential.” Residency from July–September 2020

Field Notes: Outdoor Dances for This 21st Century. Celebrated choreographer and director Catherine Galasso, together with frequent collaborators Doug LeCours, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Tara Sheena, and Meg Weeks, created Field Notes: Outdoor Dances for This 21st Century, a site-specific work for four dancers, developed in residency and performed in PS21’s apple orchards on September 18–20. Field Notes is the fourth chapter of the choreographer’s series Of Iron and Diamonds, inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron, which she began in 2017. Residency from September 12–21 2020

American Ballet Theater. Dancers from American Ballet Theatre devoted their monthlong bubble residency to developing, rehearsing, and filming Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Indestructible Light, the choreographer’s first work for the company. Set to songs by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Neal Hefti, and Billy Strayhorn, the work celebrates the enduring contributions of these American jazz masters. Moultrie was joined by Director of Repertoire Carlos Lopez and ABT members Anabel Katsnelson, Betsy McBride, Erica Lall, Jacob Clerico, Melvin Lawovi, and Duncan McIlwaine. Residency in October 2020

Sandbox Percussion, preparing Andy Akiho’s Seven Pillars for recording at PS21, assisted by the composer and producer/engineer Sean Dixon. The 80-minute work, a genre-defying audio and video collaboration (the quartet commissioned short films by 11 1 video artists, one for each movement), was released as an album in September 2021. The residency was the culmination of a multi-year journey from concept to concert-ready of this ambitious, seven-member ensemble movement piece that incorporates solos for each musician.

In a livestreamed Zoom session 2 , Sandbox Percussion took viewers behind the scenes of their recording and post-production sessions. Reflecting on the challenge of creating Seven Pillars, Akiho said, “I’ve never taken on a project this ambitious—it’s nearly 80 minutes of music—but I was inspired by the collaborative relationship I have with Sandbox.” Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times noted that thanks to this collective process, Akiho “casts a new kind of spell, a trance experienced by four players at once.” Residency in November 2020