Summer 2020 Artist Residencies
August 10—17: Edisa Weeks / Delirious Dances
Edisa Weeks, choreographer, educator, and director of DELIRIOUS DANCES, was in residence August 10–17, 2020, working on Three Rites, her epic exploration of the American guarantees of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Digging into—and taking digs at—the complex history of these rights and how they manifest in the body, Three Rites reckons with our past and present with poignancy and humor.
During her summer 2020 residency, Weeks participated in a public online forum with James Powell, editor of the queer Black zine, The Tenth, members of Mislay Colony, and Perfect Ten and the Sylvia Center, two of PS21’s community partners who work with low-income youth of color. The conversation addressed the challenges of creating interactive theater during a pandemic and making the performing arts more accessible for Black artists.
More 2020 Summer Residencies
June 22—24 and July 30—August 8 2020
Ashley Tata on the PS21 Pavilion stage balcony directing the multi-camera stream of Luther Adams’s Ten Thousand Birds
Experimental opera director Ashley Tata came to PS21 for the first time this year, creating an environmental adaptation of John Luther Adams’s work mounted along our public trails.
July—September 2020: Modern Music Fest
Adam Tendler performing at the Modern Music Fest. Photograph by Steven Pisano
Short-term performance engagements and residencies for artists of our Modern Music Fest. 4 musicians in residency for 3 nights. Read below an artist testimonial on experiencing a residency on PS21’s campus.
“Thank you for the opportunity to visit PS21, both to perform and also to work during the residency. Both of those aspects of my time in Chatham, including the quiet isolation, were incredibly helpful to my spirit and to my deadlines! I left feeling replenished, fulfilled, and inspired to move onto the next thing. I also felt a little sad, because the experience was simply so positive, the facilities and gear so top-notch, the people so fantastic, and surroundings so perfect, that it was a wistful goodbye. But hopefully we can continue to scheme, plot and plan for future “somethings.” Everyone I talked to who experienced PS21 on Saturday night was blown away by the facility and its potential.”
—Adam Tendler, Modern Music Fest Musician
August 1—8 2020: Alarm Will Sound
Alan Pierson with composer Anais Maivel in residency at PS21
As part of the residency program in summer 2020, Alarm Will Sound spent over a week at PS21 workshopping compositions of the Franco-Haitian singer and percussionist Anaïs Maviel and Tyshan Sorey’s For George Lewis, the composer’s multi-textured symphonic homage to his musical mentor. Their recording was released this year (2021).
August 31—September 12 2020: BodySonnet, Peridance, and Gallim Dance
Neave Trio (Anna Williams, Eri Nakamura, Mikhail Veselov), dancers of BodySonnet and GALIM (Joslin Vezeau, Ashley Hill, Moscelyne Parke-Harrison, Jake Nahor, Sean Lammer), with D-Cell director David Michalek. By PS21 staff, PS21 Dance Barn Studio.
Dancers from BodySonnet, Peridance, and Gallim used PS21’s architecture, meadows, and trails as a media canvas, on which they choreographed decelerated movement sequences for David Michalek’s D-Cell, a work that combined elements of exhibition and performance. The Neave Trio accompanied the dancers with music by Morton Feldman, whose compositions, which “seldom rise above a whisper . . . glacially slow and snowily soft (Alex Ross, the New Yorker),” provided perfect counterpoint.
September 12—21 2020: Field Notes: Outdoor Dances for This 21st Century
Kat Galasso at Field Notes for This 21st Century in September 2020