43 performances, sold-out houses, 4 World and US Premieres, 45 free and low-cost community-focused PATHWAYS events, 11 workshops with composers, choreographers, dancers, and musicians, and over 30 ensembles, companies, and soloists, the 180 artists of PS21’s enchanted and challenged our audiences in Chatham during the 2022 Season.

 The 2022 Season included U.S. company debuts, world and North American premieres, international artists, and performances of work developed in our growing artists’ residency program. More than 50 events, staged in the theater, in our fields, and along our trails, by a constellation of celebrated and emerging dancers and choreographers, musicians and singers, actors, directors, and international street artists who are breathing new life into traditional genres and creating new ones. Expanded PS21’s PATHWAYS, our popular pas de deux between nature and the arts, at its largest and most ambitious, still free of charge to the community.

PS21 is more than just a theater. For many of our artists, it’s also an incubator of new work. Four developmental residencies in our theaters and landscape yielded freshly minted works from Qudus Onikeku and his QDance Company (Nigeria), South Korea’s Playfactory Mabangzen and Yellowbomb in collaboration with Concrete Temple Theater, regional artists Sylvia Milo / Nathan Davis, and The Jamal Jackson Dance Company. During their residencies, the creators had uninterrupted access to our Pavilion Theater, 100-acre campus, Dance Barn, and artist housing, culminating in highly anticipated public performances.

May 21–22, 2022. The Legend of the Waitress & The Robber World premiere of the groundbreaking collaboration between Concrete Temple Theater and South Korea’s Playfactory Mabangzen and Yellowbomb. A dystopian comedy, of isolation and aging, developed in residency at PS21.  

June 3–4, 2022. Re:INCARNATION QDance’s ode to the richness of Nigerian culture and Africa’s powers of reinvention, drawing on Afrobeats, Afro dances, and Black aesthetics. US Premiere. 

June 10, 2022. The Sean Mason Quintet The pianist/composer, a Jazz at Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, leads his ensemble in selections from his Southern, Migration, and Recovery suites. 

June 17, 2022. Vox Sambou The explosive Montreal-based collective blends the traditional rhythms of Haitian Compas with elements of Afrobeat, jazz, reggae, and hip-hop in Haitian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

June 24, 2022. House Blend Concert I  The Ulysses Quartet, Leelanee Sterrett (horn), Alan Feinberg (piano), Brandon Ilaw (percussion), Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and David Adam Moore (reciter) perform Bach, Schoenberg, Wuorinen, and Lansky. 

June 26, 2022. House Blend Concert II  Brandon Ilaw (percussion), Milutin Jocic (baritone), Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and Leelanee Sterrett (horn) play works by Schubert, Helps, Gerhard, Kondo, Kagel, and Alvarez. 

July 6–7, 2022. Paul Taylor Dance Company One of dance’s most innovative companies returns to PS21 with three groundbreaking works: Airs (1978), Cloven Kingdom (1976), and Syzygy (1987). 

July 8, 2022. House Blend Concert III Lizzie Burns (bass) Joshua Roman (cello) Amy Burton (soprano) John Musto (piano) play works by Druckman, Kancheli, Aucoin, and love songs and favorites from the Great American songbook.

July 10, 2022. I am the utterance of my name: Divining Mary Magdalene: Playwright Sylvia Milo,  percussionist Nathan Davis, and dancer Joanna Kotze in a preview premiere of the music-theater exploration of the  ancient and modern myths, beliefs, and symbols surrounding Mary Magdalene.

July 15, 2022. Anopas by Compagnie Art Move Concept fuses hip-hop and contemporary dance with elements of silent comedy, mime, and circus arts to expand and enrich our sense of physical and emotional possibility. 

July 21 & 23, 2022. Three Decembers Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer probe the tensions between an aging actress and her children, a daughter in a failing marriage and a young, gay son under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. Copresented with the Berkshire Opera Festival. 

July 25, 2022. Field of Vision Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon creates a large-scale, site-responsive work, 36 percussionists moving across PS21’s landscape, directed by Doug Perkins. PS21 PATHWAYS. Free

July 28–29, 2022. One. One & One Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company brings choreographer Noa Wertheim’s vision of sustainability to the Pavilion Theater’s stage: by ten dancers on a soil-covered floor. 

August 5, 2022. PS21 Gala in the Orchards Featuring a farm-to-table dinner al fresco and Mark Morris Dance Group performing V and Water to the music of Schumann’s Quintet and Handel’s Water Music. 

August 6, 2022. Jamal Jackson Dance Company premieres 846, a reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, transposed to contemporary “everyday” America’s sacrifices of Black lives.

August 6, 2022. Mark Morris Dance Group presents Pacific, Jenn and Spencer, and Grand Duo, set to the music of Lou Harrison and Henry Cowell performed live by the MMDG Music Ensemble. 

August 11, 2022. DakhaBrakha  The Ukrainian “ethno-chaos” band mixes punk-pop, traditional Ukrainian music and more in its accompaniment to Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s silent classic Earth.  

September 2–3, 2022. Farm Fatale, Philippe Quesne’s eco-futurist fable, marries activism and art in an indelible confrontation with the environmental apocalypse. A centerpiece of PS21 PATHWAYS. 

September 3–4, 2022. C’est pas là, c’est par là (It’s Not Here, It’s Over Here) Compagnie Galmae – Juhyung Lee (France / S. Korea) transforms a crowd of spectators into a problem-solving collective.

September 4, 2022 Summer Season Ending Celebration. Ecstatic Dance led by DJ Joro-Boro, Compagnie Galmae’s participatory C’est pas là, c’est par là, and a concert by The Moles, Philippe Quesne’s larger-than-life creatures who combine utopian spectacle and punk rock music.

ONGOING: PATHWAYS and Movement without Borders: May–September, 2022 Dance with Hudson Valley-based theater makers and Master Classes with visiting artists and other performers throughout the summer, including Dance with the Mark Morris Dance Group on the Hudson Waterfront! Programs for Young People: PS21’s annual series of Friday afternoon performances and workshops by visiting companies, tailored for kids and their families, as well as other Immersive Workshops, Classes, and Encounters with the Arts and Nature. 

2022 FALL WINTER SEASON:

OCT 30, 2022. World Premiere – Inside Spaces, Amir ElSaffar and Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch. Inside Spaces, an electro-acoustic collaboration by trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar and electronics performer and composer Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch. 

NOV 18, 2022. Resonant Mechanisms: The Experimental Music Tradition in Upstate New York – [Switch~ Ensemble]. Featuring the world premiere of newly commissioned works by composers Victoria Cheah and Jen Kutler, alongside works from Sarah Hennies and Julius Eastman, the program explores a range of modalities in music for quintet and electronics.

NOV 12, 2022. This is National Wake – Mirissa Neff

Chatham-based international filmmaker Mirissa Neff screens This is National Wake, her documentary tracing the rise and fall of the multiracial South African punk group.The screening is followed by a Q&A and DJ set of vintage African dance grooves spun by director Mirissa Neff.