2023 Season Recap

HAMLET | TOILET  by Japan’s acclaimed theater company Kaimaku Pennant Race (KPR), brings PS21’s 2023 season to a close.

Between Memorial Day weekend and the new year in 2023 we have presented 30 distinct productions, many of them sold-out, hosted 48 free and low-cost community events and workshops, and welcomed 182  artists and companies for productions and developmental residencies. We’ve extended our programming into the Fall and Winter, with nature walks and performances and screenings.

Adventurous, collaborative, and engaged, our programming featured eight World and North American Premieres and four US company debuts of contemporary circus arts, global music, and performing arts from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and beyond. The year’s offerings ranged over our 100-acre campus, from the state-of-the-art Pavilion and Black Box Theaters, to our fields, meadows, woodland trails, and orchards.

This year we’ve made remarkable strides in our mission to bring the best of contemporary performance to PS21. Our audiences have grown, as has local and regional involvement in PATHWAYS.

Notable this year are FA by AMOUKANAMA CIRCUS, acrobats, dancers, and musicians from Guinea, centering on migration, education, and opportunity, and  Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me, based on polka chinata, a courtship dance saved from extinction by the Italian theater maker. Performances that engendered enthusiasm include the North American premiere of  ANIMA, a collaborative installation by French visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal and director Maëlle Poésy, drawn from recent discoveries in the study of ancient climate; Celebrating Juneteenth on the Hudson Waterfront! with the Resistance Revival Chorus; and Community dance parties with Puerto Rico’s Plena Libra and Guinean dancers of Amoukanama.

Since 2020, we have presented memorable US and North American premieres and company debuts, including Runners from Cirk La Putyka, Czech Republic and Save the Last Dance for Me, and devised new frameworks, including community dance parties and workshops, for challenging work. Our curatorial focus is often on multi-disciplinary creations that defy easy categorization—for example, dance that incorporates circus, acrobatics, aerial suspension, and performance art, notably choreographer Gisèle Vienne’s L’Etang (The Pond), a North American English-language premiere.

Despite the hurdles of the US visa process, we continued to seek out companies that address today’s urgent issues—migration, climate change, social justice, and marginalized cultures. In 2023 this included  Amoukanama’s FA, which we supported from its 2020 inception to the 2023 North American premiere; Wanjiru Kamuyu’s An Immigrant’s Story; and Never Twenty One, by Smaïl Kanouté/Compagnie Vivons, works that dramatize the quest for tolerance, opportunity, and survival in a hostile world.

Many of these works are PATHWAYS events, PS21’s multidisciplinary series of free and affordable performances, classes, and workshops that we launched in 2020. PATHWAYS, at the intersection of nature and the arts, moves beyond our theater to our trails, and meadows, and beyond, bringing American and international artists into Hudson Valley communities and  schools, libraries, and open spaces. Except for low-cost programs held chiefly on PS21’s main stage, these events are free, a counterweight to the cost-prohibitive model that makes access  to cultural expression inaccessible to most people.

Residencies are integral to PS21 programming. Most culminate in work-in-progress or premiere performances, and they often incorporate workshops and master classes for local youth and the community at large. Workshops include introductions to contemporary dance forms and music, jazz, circus arts, and acting, conducted by, among others, Next Festival of Contemporary Music, a residency with workshops for young musicians; Susie Ibarra leading Rhythm in Nature; Invisible Cities, a two week long workshop with Processional Arts. The Civilians, a documentary theater company concluded our program of 2023  creative residencies in December.

Nearly every PS21 initiative  benefits from collaboration with regional, national, and international partners. This is particularly true of outreach efforts to cultivate new audiences and attract young people to workshops, where our partner organizations number twenty-seven and continue to grow: Perfect 10, Hudson Youth, Kite’s Nest, Operation Unite NY, Town of Chatham Crellin Community Park youth programs are just a few of them.

PS21’s executive and artistic director, Elena Siyanko has led its transformation into a year-round center of performance of music, dance, theater, contemporary circus, visual and multimedia arts, commissions, residencies, community-oriented activities and collaborations that New York Times critic Jason Farago called “a country theater that outclasses most of Manhattan.” We  have enlarged the board, articulated PS21’s identity and mission to the press and public, attracted new, younger audiences, revamped the organization and staff, and, crucially, expanded our sources of financial support.