PS21’s 2023 Summer Season, June through October, Adventurous, Collaborative, Engaged

PS21’s 2023 Summer Season, June–October | Adventurous, Collaborative, Engaged

June through October—featuring more than 50 events in our open-air Pavilion Theater, in the fields and meadows, and throughout the region. A constellation of celebrated and emerging dancers and choreographers, musicians and singers, actors, directors, and international street artists breathing life into traditional genres and creating new ones.

THEATER AND DANCE

Eight World and North American Premieres / Four U.S. Company Debuts.

INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Contemporary circus arts, global music, and performing arts from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and beyond.

THE HOUSE BLEND CONCERTS

A perennial favorite, brewed with audiences in mind.

PATHWAYS 

Immersive and participatory, our season-long series at the intersection of nature and the arts, free and open to all.

MEMBER TICKETS ON SALE MARCH 31 ($250+ LEVELS), PUBLIC TICKETS ON SALE APRIL 10

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS

May 25–June 2, The NEXT Festival of Emerging Artists, a program for early-career musicians, composers and choreographers in residency. On June 2, a concert celebrating The NEXT Festival‘s 10th Anniversary, with a program of five World Premieres for string orchestra by guest artist guitarist and composer Yvette Young, 2022 Pulitzer Finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti, composer/violinist (and Next Festival alum) Che Buford, saxophonist/composer Matthew Evan Taylor, and NEXT Festival Artistic Director Peter Askim.

June 17, PS21 presents The Resistance Revival Chorus celebrating Juneteenth at Promenade Hill Park in Hudson, NY. The celebrated collective of over 60 women and non-binary singers fuses music and activism to inspire political and social change.

June 22–23, Paul Taylor Dance Company, with a program featuring three Taylor masterworks, Mercuric Tidings, A Field of Grass, and Piazzolla Caldera.

July 2, Community-wide Social Dance party with a multi-Grammy Award–nominated trailblazing band Plena Libre, masters of the traditional Puerto Rican plena and bomba styles

July 15, Susie Ibarra’s Rhythm in Nature | A morning community listening and field recording workshop and evening performance: World Premiere of Four Meditations on Impermanence, solo percussion by Susie Ibarra featuring guest soloists and ensembles

July 22, Runners, an invigorating work of Czech New Circus from Cirk La Putyka. A hit at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Guardian calls Runners “a moving exploration of time . . . through dance, music, acrobatics and dialogue.”

July 29, Save the Last Dance for Me. Italian theatermaker Alessandro Sciarroni’s inventive reincarnation of the polka chinata, a nearly lost Bolognese courtship dance from the last century. “A dance researcher with the soul of a visual artist.” — La Repubblica.

August 19, Amoukanama Circus, Guinean acrobats, dancers, and musicians in FA (“To Come”) a joyous enactment of migration from Conakry to Europe and beyond in search of education and opportunity. A PATHWAYS program in partnership with Crellin Park Day.

September 2–3, ANIMA, an immersive multidisciplinary performance-installation about the earth’s climate future by visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin. A Festival d’Avignon 2022 and Venice Biennial 2023 highlight, and PS21 PATHWAYS centerpiece.

September 16, An Immigrant’s Story, Wanjiru Kamuyu, moving through a landscape of 35 empty black chairs, creates an intimate portrait of the migrant’s experience of being uprooted, exotified, and subjected to racism as she searches for a place in the world.

September 30, Never Twenty One, SmaÏl Kanouté’s tribute to young Black victims of gun violence. Three male figures, torsos graffitied with testimonials spoken by victims’ families, recount the stories of lives cut short through contemporary dance movements rooted in the street styles of New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg.

October 13–14, L’Etang (The Pond). Gisèle Vienne’s scintillating adaptation of Robert Walser’s bitter family drama. With Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel and music by doom metal band Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O’Malley. “A transfixing performance.” — Laura Cappelle, The New York Times.

November 3–4, Pauline Oliveros: Intensity 20.15: Grace Chasefor speaking flutist and Expanded Instrument System. Conceived and performed by visionary flutist and current Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall Claire Chase, the piece is inspired by the writings of her grandmother, Grace Chase. Paired with This Is Mary Brown, a one-woman play by OBIE Award winning actor/director Winsome Brown.

READ MORE ABOUT PS21’S 2023 SUMMER SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

2023 FULL SEASON AT A GLANCE

May 21, Apple bloom Members Party in the PS21 orchards, with a special performance by Nuevo Flamenco luminary Patricia Guerrero, the recipient of a Spanish Ministry of Culture National Dance Award in 2021.

May 25–June 3, The NEXT Festival of Emerging Artists, with a June 2 preview performance, including five World Premieres.

June 17, The Resistance Revival Chorus celebrates Juneteenth at Henry Hudson Riverfront Park, with a workshop and a panel discussion on June 18 at Lightforms Art Center, Hudson, NY.

June 22–23, Paul Taylor Dance Company: Mercuric Tidings, A Field of Grass, & Piazzolla Caldera.

July 2, Community-wide Social Dance party with a multi-Grammy Award–nominated trailblazing band Plena Libre, masters of the traditional Puerto Rican plena and bomba styles.

July 14, Global Music: Andalusian band La Banda Morisca (Spain).

July 15, Susie Ibarra’s Rhythm in Nature | A morning community listening and field recording workshop and evening performance: World Premiere of Four Meditations on Impermanence, solo percussion by Susie Ibarra featuring guest soloists and ensembles

July 16, House Blend concert I: Leo Ornstein; Claude Vivier; Lili Boulanger; Igor Stravinsky; Rebecca Saunders. Featuring Eric Huebner (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), and Adrian Sandi (clarinet).

July 21, PS21’s 2023 Gala, featuring the North American Premiere of Runners by Cirk La Putyka (Czech Republic).

July 22, Public performance: North American Premiere of Runners, an invigorating work of Czech New Circus from Cirk La Putyka. A hit at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Guardian calls Runners “a moving exploration of time…through dance, music, acrobatics and dialogue.”

July 29, PATHWAYS DAY | Processional Arts Workshop performs Invisible Cities, a roving installation inspired by Italo Calvino’s fiction. Plus Save the Last Dance for Me, Italian theatermaker Alessandro Sciarroni’s inventive reincarnation of the polka chinata, a nearly lost Bolognese courtship dance from the last century. Save the Last Dance for Me dancers Gianmaria Borzillo and Giovanfrancesco Giannini will lead a community workshop, where participants dive into the polka chinata, helping to rescue an art form from the brink of extinction.

August 16, On Point, by Piet Van Dycke (the Netherlands), a wordless, site-specific circus and dance performance, with a community workshop on August 17. A PATHWAYS program

August 19, PATHWAYS | CRELLIN PARK DAY | Amoukanama Circus, Guinean acrobats, dancers, and musicians in FA, with Amoukanama artists leading workshops on Aug. 18 & 20.

August 5, House Blend concert II: The Ulysses Quartet, Nuika Wadden (harp), Sun Li (pipa), in a double-bill program featuring works by Tan Dun, Berio, Telemann, Ligeti, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Beethoven, Sky Macklay, and Rhiannon Giddens.

August 25, House Blend concert III: Hub New Music ensemble (flute, clarinet, strings), Ayano Kataoka and Matthew Gold (percussion), and Adam Tendler, piano.

September 2–3, ANIMA, an immersive multidisciplinary performance-installation about the earth’s climate future by visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin. A Festival d’Avignon 2022 and Venice Biennial 2023 highlight, and PS21 PATHWAYS centerpiece.

September 16, An Immigrant’s Story, Wanjiru Kamuyu (Kenya/France).

September 30, Never Twenty One, SmaÏl Kanouté & Compagnie Vivons! (France).

October 13–14, L’Etang (The Pond) Gisèle Vienne’s adaptation of Robert Walser’s bitter family drama. With Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel and music by doom metal band Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O’Malley.

November 3–4, Pauline Oliveros: Intensity 20.15: Grace Chase performed by Claire Chase, paired with This Is Mary Brown, by actor/director Winsome Brown.

MAY–OCTOBER, ONGOING

Movement Without Borders, weekly sessions of yoga, Pilates, and wellness classes, plus free workshops with visiting luminaries.

Season-long creative engagement with the grounds including open rehearsals with visiting artists, self-guided ecology walks, and StoryWalk, a collaboration between PS21 and the Columbia Land Conservancy.

Site-specific art installations: James Casebere’s Solo Pavilion for Two or Three, an architectural sculpture that interrogates the delicate balancing act between the human need for shelter and our obligation to preserve the landscape.

ABOUT PS21

With a well-earned reputation as “a Hudson Valley outpost of the avant-garde” (The New York Times, June 2022), PS21/ Performance Spaces for the Twenty-first Century, is home to a state-of-the art, green, 350-seat theatre offering resident makers and performers the tools and flexibility for successful innovation and collaboration in developing and presenting sophisticated multi-media work. Just five of PS21’s 100+ acres of grounds are developed; the rest are meadows and woodlands.

Founded in 2006, PS21 is the mecca for innovative programming by leading and emerging artists in music, dance, theater, contemporary performance, and the visual and multimedia arts in the Hudson Valley. We support artists’ creative endeavors, connect them to a broad, diverse audience outside the conventional urban setting, and offer the region’s year-round inhabitants the opportunity to engage with the arts regardless of economic status, age, or cultural background.

PS21’s programming also reflects our commitment to environmental preservation and the quest for a sustainable future. Among recent seasons’ performances that focused on environmental issues, including global warming, were the New York State premiere of John Luther Adams’s Ten Thousand Birds (2020), Heartbeat Opera’s The Extinctionist (2021), a cautionary vision of the future threatened by rising sea levels, the screening of Earth, Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s masterly 1930 critique of the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, with live accompaniment by DakhaBrakha, the Ukrainian ethno-chaos band, and Philippe Quesne’s eco-futurist fable Farm Fatale (2022). This year’s season highlight, ANIMA, from France, a spectacular performance-installation by visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin, without moralizing about ecological precarity, combines music, photos, film, and circus performance to create an experience of the vertigo of time, the fragility of landscapes, and the power of the elements.

Our Pavilion Theater is a green-energy marvel surrounded by 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands that are a haven to wildlife and visitors across the region. Integrated into our unspoiled campus, the theater embodies our commitments to the public: open, inviting, and optimized for their enjoyment and encouraging citizen expression and participation. Our state-of-the-art green theater provides artists with a level of technical support that few facilities, in the US or elsewhere, can match.

Throughout the year, PS21 hosts residencies for dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, actors, and creators of unclassifiable innovative and multi-media theater pieces.