PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century

SIGN UP TODAY! Movement Without Borders classes commence at PS21 on May 13 with Peggy Wallin-Hart teaching Pilates in our Dance Barn, cross-ventilated and socially distanced. Sign up here: https://ps21chatham.org/movement-without-borders-2021/ The next session will be ballet with Adam Weinert on May 15 at 11 am in the Dance Barn. Join our weekly 70-minute classes in yoga, Pilates, and dance to enliven the mind, body, and spirit!... All sessions are $15 and require preregistration. MWoB 2021 Schedule: Pilates with Peggy Wallin-Hart: Thursdays at 5:30 pm, May 13 September 9 Ballet with Adam Weinert: Saturdays at 11:00 am, May 15 September 11 Yoga with Sondra Loring: Wednesdays at noon, May 19 September 15 There will be additional workshops and master classes with visiting artists and performers throughout the summer. Peggy Wallin-Hart Sondra Loring Art Omi Ephrat Asherie Dance Wendy Whelan Dancer Philadanco! The Philadelphia Dance Company

At PS21, Spring burst forth with Heartbeat Opera’s brilliant Extinctionist, but Winter too was a creative season when dancers from American Ballet Theatre developed and filmed Nunanu and "Soirée Nocturne" during the company's January residency. "Nunanu," choreographed by Luciana Paris, is set to Erial by Rodrigo Aranjuelo, and "Soirée Nocturne" is danced to Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp Minor by Frédéric Chopin and choreographed by Melvin Lawovi. Both pieces express the flui...d grace of dynamic partnership. Lawovi spoke of capturing the calm of the pas de deux: "I wanted the audience to experience the feeling of peace and serenity that you get when you connect with your partner on stage." The lighting is by our own Oleg Balitskiy, PS21 Tech Manager. You can view the performance of Soirée Nocturne here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0KtehbVpaY

Kids in the theater, youth on the trails, clowning and crashing across all sorts of spaces in PS21 landscape! On Wednesday May 5 we had the pleasure of hosting a boisterous group from the Morris Memorial Afterschool Program, our local partner on educational initiatives. After working with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus for 8 weeks, participants aged 8-18 paraded their progress in acrobatics, plate spinning, stilt walking, and diabolo juggling on stage at PS21’s Pavilion Theate...r before a socially-distanced audience. Photographs by Steve Taylor. Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Morris Memorial

This week PS21 staff were thrilled to spend time with Hudson Valley-based artist James Casebere as he oversaw Func Art Design’s placement of his architectural installation Solo Pavilion for Two or Three in the PS21 landscape. The piece is a continuation of Casebere’s long-term architectural series that explores the tension between public and private space. Casebere is a multi-talented photographer and sculptor whose large-scale works have been shown at the Walker Art Center..., the MCA Chicago, Sonsbeek, Arnhem and elsewhere; his photographic works, which explore the relationship between sculpture, photography, architecture, and film, have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Tate Gallery, LACMA and others. Solo Pavilion for Two or Three is PS21’s second outdoor installation and marks the start of this year’s PATHWAYS: Blazing Trails to a Sustainable Future. The installation will be unveiled during Upstate Diary’s Art Trek weekend on May 30, in which PS21 is participating for the first time. PS21 acknowledges with thanks the generosity and support of Sean Kelly Gallery and the artist for making the installation of Solo Pavilion for Two or Three possible. James Casebere Upstate Diary Sean Kelly Gallery

On Tuesday June 8, the Escher String Quartet launches PS21’s 2021 Chamber Music series with selections from two of the last century’s masters, Bela Bartók (18811945) and Jean Sibelius (18651957). The program opens with Bartok's final quartet, a work composed in late 1939 that combines aching grief--his mother was dying and World War II unfolding--with teeming intensity. The unconventional and engrossing "Voces Intimae," a deeply personal work written in 1909, follows. Sibelius described this piece as "the kind of thing that "brings a smile to your lips at the hour of death." Video courtesy of Arts Management Group: https://www.artsmg.com/escher-string-quartet

Flashback to last winter, reminding us of the residency with the incomparable Camille A. Brown, 2020 Obie Award Winner for Sustained Excellence in Choreography, developing new work at PS21

THE EXTINCTIONIST, a new one-act opera in development at PS21 that will kick off the Summer 2021 Season on May 29, has been featured in A I R M A I L, a monthly culture matrix "for the cosmopolitan traveler!"

Never a warm day goes by without inspiration from our avian friends at PS21 as birds chortle, snicker, warble, and weep throughout the summer across our rolling landscape. Take, for instance, the crew representing The Birds summer festival in London. Master composers and musicians attempt to reproduce their conversation, enlightening audiences to their whims and fancy. Reminiscing about brilliant days and gentler times One treasured memory from last year is the New York St...ate premiere of John Luther Adams’s Ten Thousand Birds, a socially distanced serenade migrating from the Pavilion Theater stage to the trails. The ensemble slipped into PS21’s landscape for an improvisational take on the piece unique to PS21 Follow Me Into the Field. John Luther Adams recalled the performance: "At this difficult moment, it's more important than ever for us to remember our connections with the larger-than-human world, and to celebrate the never-ending music of this miraculous planet that is our one and only home." https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/subjectobject-the-birds-fest

We are thrilled to currently be hosting an exceptionally talented crop of young dancers from American Ballet Theatre in residency at PS21. In the last couple of weeks, the cast including Anabel Katsnelson, Betsy McBride, Erica Lall, Jacob Clerico, Melvin Lawovi, and Duncan McIlwaine has been working with choreographer Darrell Grand Moultrie and Director of Repertoire Carlos Lopez to prepare Moultrie’s first work for American Ballet Theatre, a celebration of American jazz created to a score by Duke Ellington. On their last day off, the dancers met the residents of Chatham Animal Haven, a farm animal rescue operation PS21 houses on its property.

Last weekend, we were thrilled to host Honey's Brooklyn, known for their fantastic fermented drinks, as they gathered wild grapes from "Judy's Hill" and crab apples from our 100-acre property's orchards to make a special estate cider for us. While the leaves are still in peak, stop by for a stroll on our new PATHWAYS trails, which are open to the public from sunrise to sunset.

Brooklyn-based choreographer and director Catherine Galasso, during the rehearsal of Field Notes: Outdoor Dances for This 21st Century, an original site-specific work for four dancers created for the apple orchards at PS21 during a developmental residency. Performed on the late summer afternoons of September 18, 19, & 20, this new piece was in direct response to our current moment of great uncertainty and uprising, conjuring a space of wistfulness, melancholy, and delight, acknowledging the weight of this unprecedented epoch, without directly commenting on it. The performance was developed in partnership with the Town of Chatham as part of PATHWAYS, a new system of trails connecting PS21’s 100-acre property and Crellin Park and the Town of Chatham. Photo Credits: Doug Stalker, Garrett Roche, Ralph Gartner, Steven Taylor

Last month, audiences were invited to surrender to a novel experience of time and space on PS21’s sprawling grounds as we hosted D-Cell: an Exhibition & Durational Performance in two parts conceived and directed by multi-disciplinary visual artist David Michalek. Created at PS21 under the cloud of the global pandemic that is making us question our perceptions of time and our roles as inhabitants of our fragile planet, D-Cell (as in deceleration) speaks to the current moment. ...Interweaving performance and music, D-Cell looks toward the future. As we race toward uncharted territory, this work explores the medium of different temporalities to challenge received ideas of acceleration and deceleration, simultaneity, and progress. The performances at PS21 commenced on the hill adjacent to the Pavilion Theater, moved to Judy’s Hill, and concluded at the Dance Barn meadow. Photo Credit: Mark S. Kornbluth