PS21/ Performance Spaces for the 21st Century Awarded Grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts

Chatham, NY— PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century will receive a $244,000 matching grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for capital improvements to its Pavilion Theater and a $15,000 Grant for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support their PATHWAYS 2023 initiative.

The NYSCA grant will allow PS21 to install a new retractable riser system in the theater and add a dedicated rainwater remediation system to the building’s current system of rain guards and swales. The grant for capital improvements is part of a record funding initiative by NYSCA, which totals over $42 million to 144 capital projects across New York State. In announcing the grants, Governor Kathy Hochul said, “Strengthening our creative sector increases tourism, boosts our economy, and enhances the rich cultural life of New York State. These record grants will support a wide range of diverse and innovative projects at our arts and cultural organizations across the state, helping ensure all who visit will continue to have wonderful experiences for years to come.”

The new riser system, a 250-seat, 4-unit telescoping seating platform will allow for easy, safe reconfiguration for our varied artistic and institutional purposes. The new system, which will allow the risers to be quickly reconfigured or even removed altogether allows us to present innovative new work that requires flexible performance space and audience participation. The theater’s high, curving roofline requires a custom-fabricated rainwater drainage system. As architect Evan Stoller, who will also act as project manager, explains, “The rain gutter, expanded by its required capacity, becomes a segmented fascia along the curving eave of the roof. At night this arc will glow like a long marque that defines the theater.”

Since our state-of-the-art theater was inaugurated in 2018, PS21 has evolved into the Hudson Valley’s mecca for innovative programming by leading and emerging artists in music, dance, theater, contemporary performance, and the visual and multimedia arts. The flexibility offered by the new, readily reconfigurable riser system will enhance our well-deserved reputation as a hive of “cutting-edge performance” in Columbia County (The New York Times, June 2021).

“Programs like ANIMA, an immersive work from French visual artist Noémie Goudal and director Maëlle Poésy about earth’s climate future, Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me, and a number of other community-centered programs, which include participation by audience members, require moving the risers to create open spaces,” Executive and Artistic Director Elena Siyanko explains. “We are also dedicated to offering performances that blur aesthetic boundaries, like contemporary circus, a new artistic practice rooted in accessibility and shared public space that is possible on a large scale only in a theater equipped with a flexible riser system. The ability for the facility to adapt to different programmatic needs is a key to our purpose.”

NYSCA Chair Katherine Nicholls said, “These capital project grants are an investment from the people of New York to the people of New York and will have a positive impact on our communities for many years to come. On behalf of the Council and staff, I congratulate PS21 and look forward to seeing all that will flourish from this project.”

The NEA grant assures the future of PATHWAYS, which brings leading and emerging American and international artists into contact with local community members. This free and low-cost season-long series of art installations, participatory theater, educational workshops, processional arts, and interactive events engages area residents in creative endeavors and environmental stewardship; fosters collaboration among regional and local organizations who bring the arts to – and into – non-urban communities with limited access to work of this caliber; and highlights the links between the performing arts, the community, and the environment. PS21’s PATHWAYS is among 1,130 projects across the country, totaling more than $31 million, that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2023 funding.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to support a wide range of projects, including PS21 PATHWAYS 2023, demonstrating the many ways the arts enrich our lives and contribute to healthy and thriving communities,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “These organizations play an important role in advancing the creative vitality of our nation and helping to ensure that all people can benefit from arts, culture, and design.”

As Matthew Gold, Director of Community Initiatives, explains, “PATHWAYS audiences aren’t passive consumers of PS21’s programming, they’re active participants, even co-creators, with the artists who interact with them in free and low-cost performances, workshops, and creative projects. Whether in our theater, on our grounds, or in local parks, libraries, village streets, or farms, PATHWAYS is a living laboratory of creative exploration, immersive performances, and engagement with nature. Community participation isn’t an add-on, but a core element of our mission. Last season, we held 42 events, plus weekly classes and self-directed experiences on our unspoiled grounds, free or at very low cost, geared to families and people of all ages and backgrounds. We thus bridge the accessibility divide that too often bars area residents from discovering the cultural and intellectual richness of the performing arts. At PS21, we take innovative work out of the context of a proscenium stage, and through partnerships with local organizations, cities, and towns, bring performance and cultural experience to where people are.”

PATHWAYS 2023 offers a richer, more diverse season than ever, more than 45 events from May through October. Highlights of the 2023 Season include the Resistance Revival Chorus celebrating Juneteenth at Promenade Hill Park in Hudson; Invisible Cities, a roving performance installation inspired by Italo Calvino’s unclassifiable meditations; Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me, the centerpiece of PATHWAYS Day, a rediscovery of the Bolognese courtship dance, the polka chinata; the North American premiere of FA (To Come) by Amoukanama Circus (Guinea), a moving personal story of migration; ANIMA, an immersive work from French visual artist Noémie Goudal and director Maëlle Poésy about earth’s climate future, and on our trails, free and open to all, the world premiere of ensemble version of Four Meditations on Impermanence (2023), for solo percussion by Susie Ibarra with guests soloists and ensembles.

About the New York State Council on the Arts

NYSCA preserves and advances the arts and culture that make New York State an exceptional place to live, work and visit. NYSCA upholds the right of all New Yorkers to experience the vital contributions the arts make to our communities, education, economic development, and quality of life. To support the ongoing recovery of the arts across New York State, NYSCA will award record funding in FY 2023, providing support across the full breadth of the arts.

NYSCA further advances New York’s creative culture by convening leaders in the field and providing organizational and professional development opportunities and informational resources. Created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1960 and continued with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, NYSCA is an agency that is part of the Executive Branch. For more information on NYSCA, please visit http://www.arts.ny.gov, and follow NYSCA’s Facebook page, Twitter @NYSCArts and Instagram @NYSCouncilontheArts.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

ABOUT PS21

“PS21 presents work that challenges and invites…” The New York Times

PS21 is a center for contemporary performance in the Hudson Valley presenting adventurous productions by leading and emerging international artists in music, dance, and theater, and by visionary creators inventing entirely new genres. On its open-air Pavilion Theater stage, across its expansive natural grounds, and in the diverse surrounding communities, PS21 cultivates and presents transdisciplinary productions that blur aesthetic boundaries and balance different artistic languages and grammars. PS21’s programming engages creatively with critical global and social issues and is rooted in community collaboration.

Integrated into its unspoiled campus, the theater embodies PS21’s commitments to the public: open, inviting, and accessible to all. Throughout the year, PS21 hosts residencies for dancers, musicians, actors, and creators of innovative and unclassifiable new work. A mecca for innovative programming and original artistic voices, PS21 is a destination for a kind of performance that can be experienced nowhere else.