Pathways 2023 Recap

The 2023 season of Pathways programs—site-specific performances, workshops, installations, participatory programs, and community events—featured a range of innovative and immersive projects. Processional Arts Workshop brought Invisible Cities to life during two weeks of free community workshops in which participants collaborated to envision, create, and embody their own imagined cities as puppets, body extensions and performing objects. Based on Italo Calvino’s novel, the program culminated in a performance that transformed PS21’s grounds into a shifting landscape of ambulatory architectural follies. On August 19, the nine acrobats, dancers, and musicians of Amoukanama Circus performed the North American premiere of FA, their moving, personal story of migration and the quest for education and opportunity that brought them from the streets of Conakry to Europe and international acclaim, to over 800 attendees as part of Chatham’s Crellin Park Day. The performance was free, and was followed by a free community African dance workshop and party.

The Pathways season of free participatory programs also included a dance workshop with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, a listening lab and field recording workshop with composer/percussionist Susie Ibarra, a community dance workshop on the nearly extinct polka chinata with the dancers of Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me, Silda Wall Spitzer and Tim Jones’s landscape installation Dandelions, and daily opportunities for exploration and discovery. PS21’s grounds are free and open to the public, and offer fields, trails, and woodlands for self guided exploration, where the visitor can experience our pristine natural surroundings, encounter animals from the Chatham Animal Haven, and stumble across leading international artists creating and rehearsing new work in our open-air spaces.