PS21’s campus is alive over the months of January and Febuary, with five artist residencies in seven weeks. Ruri Mito and Circa are both performing in the Black Box Theater, with residencies around their performances. Additionally, three other companies are here to develop new work: Kyle Marshall Choreography, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Xenia Rubinos.
2025 WINTER ARTIST RESIDENCIES:
January 1—8: Ruri Mito (Japan) prepare for the North American Premiere of Matou and Where We Were Born, with performances on January 4th & 5th (sold out).
January 8—19: Circa (Australia) develops a new piece called RAVEL, and workshops and performs What Will Have Been on January 11th (sold out).
January 14—19: Kyle Marshall Choreography rehearses NDP Awardee Femenine, an evening-length dance set to composer Julius Eastman’s most joyous works. Eastman’s 1974 70-minute composition of the same title includes woodwinds, marimba, voice, vibraphone, piano, bass, and an ocean of bells. The movement’s queer architecture, groovy momentum and choreographic density matches that of the music, ebbing between joy, power and frustration of living on the margins of society.
January 27—February 2: The Brooklyn Youth Chorus workshops a new production PORT(AL) before its premiere in Spring 2025 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. PORT(AL) is an innovative choral theater experience that delves into the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, exploring its past as a bustling port and its evolution within the ever-changing tides of the city. Like a river carrying whispers of forgotten stories, the Chorus guides audiences through a confluence of song, movement, and immersive storytelling. Co-created by a team of renowned artists including Dianne Berkun Menaker, Paola Prestini, Jad Abumrad, and Jessica Grindstaff, PORT(AL) invites you to navigate the currents of time, where the echoes of history, the realities of the present, and the dreams of the future converge.
February 16—20: Xenia Rubinos, NY-based vocalist, composer, and performing artist, and her collaborators work on the staging of a new immersive live performance, Circulo de Voces. The New Yorker describes Rubinos’ work as “vocally generous, rhythmically fierce music that slips through the net of any known genre,” and Circulo de Voces continues in that spirit. A new composition and a public activation, the piece invites the audience to reimagine the choir as a public service, giving voice to memory and new futures, and becoming a living archive. Rubinos questions what a fully embodied performance looks like, engages the audience in collective voicing, and seeks her body-voice.
PS21’s dynamic Pavilion and Black Box Theaters, Dance Barn, and artists’ housing are ideally suited to short- and long-term residencies year-round. Artists in residence develop their complex ideas, projects, and collaborative work while living in our spacious 11-bed guesthouse on PS21’s peaceful, rambling grounds. The Black Box theater’s flexible configuration is designed for intimately-scaled productions and the incubation of novel creative approaches and concepts. The flexible floor plan, state-of-the-art LED lighting, sophisticated sound system, green room, dressing rooms, kitchen, and convenient artists’ housing have established PS21 as a sought-after venue for residencies by music, theater, and dance solo performers and ensembles.
