Kaatsbaan Cultural Park announces 2024 Annual Festival

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park presents the 2024 Annual Festival in Tivoli, NY, from September 13 to October 6, 2024. The festival showcases various artistic styles and genres, from visual art to contemporary dance, in indoor and outdoor settings. September 13–15 focuses on film, literary, and visual art with an author reading and conversation with Francine Prose, an art walk with curator Hilary Greene and artists, and a screening of MERCE / MISHA / MORE, a film celebrating decades of friendship, mutual admiration, and collaboration between Mikhail Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham. September 19–21, the festival celebrates music outdoors with a free Community Sing hosted by Gaia Music Collective and a performance of History of Life—Act 1, an in-development production by ensemble Contemporaneous inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. The third weekend, September 28–29, highlights Kaatsbaan’s dual role as an incubator and presenter with performances of original productions created at Kaatsbaan: dance works by Limón Dance Company, Boca Tuya, and Music from the Sole. The festival’s final weekend, October 5–6, features the Kaatsbaan debut of multi-award-winning British choreographer and director Sir Wayne McGregor and his work Autobiography (v100 and v101) on our outdoor Mountain Stage.

“The 2024 Annual Festival features a wide range of events and exhibitions exploring personal and shared histories that include memoir, musical storytelling, autobiographical dance, and more. Audiences are invited to join in the power of gathering and experience together the excellence of our artists and their cultural expressions.” said Artistic Associate Adam Weinert.

Tickets for the festival are on sale now at https://ci.ovationtix.com/36035.

Additional information can be found at www.kaatsbaan.org.

2024 Kaatsbaan Annual Festival Schedule of Events

Week 1: Film, Literary, and Visual Art

MERCE / MISHA / MORE

Date: September 13, 2024 at 7 pm

Tickets: $25

Venue: Black Box Theater

Kaatsbaan launches the Annual Festival with a film celebrating decades of friendship, mutual admiration, and collaboration between Mikhail Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham. MERCE / MISHA / MORE includes new reminiscences by Mikhail Baryshnikov, rarely seen rehearsal footage from 1967 and 1994, the duet from Cunningham’s Landrover, featuring Jacquelin Harris and Chalvar Monteiro, and Daniel Madoff’s film Event at REDCAT, performed in 2010 by Mikhail Baryshnikov with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and produced by Nancy Dalva. The film is provided courtesy of Baryshnikov Arts.

Reading + Conversation with Author Francine Prose

Dates: September 14, 2024 at 7 pm

Tickets: $15

Venue: Black Box Theater

Author of 18 works of fiction such as Bigfoot Dreams, Household Saints, Hunters and Gatherers, Primitive People, Guided Tours of Hell, and the National Book Award finalist Blue Angel, Francine Prose discusses her latest work, 1974: A Personal History. In this new memoir, she details her relationship with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers, as well as the transformative period in American history. Prose is joined in conversation by novelist and Guggenheim Fellow Samantha Hunt.

Art Walk

Date: September 15, 2024 at 2 pm

Tickets: Free, reservations encouraged

Venue: Gallery and Grounds

Curator Hilary Greene and artists from the 2024 Visual Arts Exhibition lead visitors on a guided tour of the indoor and outdoor exhibition. Learn about the works’ inspiration, creation, and placement around our pastoral property. Kaatsbaan’s annual exhibition showcases the artworks of contemporary Hudson Valley artists and features sculptures, paintings, and installations that activate the gallery and grounds of Kaatsbaan. Exhibition artists include Emil Alzamora, Sequoyah Aono, Arthur Gibbons, Kenichi Hiratsuka, Ashley Lyon, Mollie McKinley, Ian McMahon, and John Sanders. The event will take place rain or shine. Comfortable clothing and outdoor footwear are recommended. Reservations are encouraged.

Week 2: Music

Listening to Records with Joe Hagan

Date: September 19, 2024 at 7 pm

Black Box Theater

Tickets: $15

Vanity Fair special correspondent Joe Hagan brings a jazz kissa-inspired listening event to Kaatsbaan. In the spirit of Japanese listening cafés (kissa means café), Hagan invites listeners to enjoy selections from an eclectic vinyl collection through a pair of Klipsch La Scala speakers and a high-end vacuum tube amplifier, providing commentary and encouraging conversation between cuts. It will be a night of rare records and relaxed listening in high fidelity.

Joe Hagan is the author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, which Dwight Garner of The New York Times called a “supple, confident, dispassionately reported and deeply well-written biography.” He has profiled some of the most significant figures and subjects of our time, including Stephen Colbert, Hillary Clinton, Beto O’Rourke, Bill Maher, Liz Cheney, and Henry Kissinger. In 2010, he discovered the diaries of singer Nina Simone and wrote about them for The Believer magazine.

Community Sing with Gaia Music Collective

Date: September 20, 2024 at 7 pm

Venue: Outdoor Meadow Stage

Tickets: Free, reservations encouraged

Known as TikTok’s favorite community choir creators, Gaia Music Collective is coming to Kaatsbaan and all are invited to participate in this free community event. No previous music experience is necessary. Together, we will sing the song canon made popular by Hudson Valley legend Pete Seeger as Gaia Music Collective leads audience members in a singalong accompanied by a live band. Support for this event is provided by M&T Charitable Foundation. Reservations are encouraged.

From History of Life — Act I

Contemporaneous

Date: September 21, 2024 at 5 pm

Venue: Mountain Stage

Tickets: $40–$50

New Music ensemble Contemporaneous brings an early look at Act 1 of their upcoming work, History of Life, by composer and Co-Artistic Director, Dylan Mattingly, and librettist Thomas Bartscherer. The piece invites the audience to experience music and storytelling in the Homeric oral tradition that created the Odyssey as though it had been passed down continuously from parents to children for the last 2700 years, picking up stories and sounds with each generation. Singer Iarla Ó Lionáird is accompanied by a ragtag band of twelve musicians who play hurdy-gurdies, harp, toy piano, harmonium, strings, and percussion. History of Life draws on the original rhythms and language of ancient Greek, the mesmerizing power of Ireland’s sean-nós singing, and both real and entirely imaginary folk musical traditions, creating a sound that is altogether new.

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 25 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the most transformative music by living composers through performances, commissions, recordings, and educational programs. Described as “exact and detailed, but also lively and openly dancing” (The New York Times) and “leading new music towards its better self” (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous particularly champions the creation of large-scale works and “dream projects,” which composers might not otherwise have opportunities to realize due to scale.

Week 3: New Works – Dance

New Works Bill: Limón Dance Company, Boca Tuya, and Music From The Sole

Date: September 28, 2024 at 7 pm and September 29, 2024 at 2 pm

Venue: Black Box Theater

Tickets: $25

A mixed bill of dance performances built during residencies at Kaatsbaan, which highlights Kaatsbaan’s dual role as incubator and presenter. Works include a preview performance of a new creation by Bessie Awardee Kayla Farrish that examines two thematically aligned works by José Limón. Redes (Nets) (1951) is a representation of collective work and unity, and El Grito (The Scream) (1952) is an awakening of consciousness. Farrish, who has roots as an African American woman from the south, connects the work to the displacement of colored bodies and a continuous seeking for identity and community—themes Limón explored over 70 years ago.

Boca Tuya performs Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight, a shapeshifting duet developed at Kaatsbaan in 2023. Boca Tuya is led by queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and director Omar Román De Jesús. He describes this piece as “a beacon of defiance, encouraging everyone to embrace their uniqueness and challenge the boundaries that confine them.” The rhythmic complexity and daring physicality invite us to explore the mysterious landscapes of desire, identity, and aspiration. Omar was the inaugural Baryshnikov Arts Fellow at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, a 2023 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awardee, and a 2022 Princess Grace Award Winner in Choreography.

The program also features a performance by Music From The Sole, including material from a new work-in-development that explores the profound link between tap dance, Afro-Brazilian, and house music. The work is being created by 10 dancers and musicians in an intertwined process, demonstrating the movement and music of tap. Company dancers perform with their trademark embrace of tap’s Afro-diasporic roots and connection to various forms of music, such as jazz, funk, soul, house, samba, and hip-hop. Support for Music From The Sole provided by Works & Process at the Guggenheim.

Week 4: Ballet

Autobiography (v100 and v101)

Company Wayne McGregor

Date: October 5, 2024 at 5 pm and October 6, 2024 at 2 pm

Venue: Mountain Stage

Tickets: $40–$50

Throughout his career, Sir Wayne McGregor has created choreography that explores the relationship between the human body and technology. Autobiography merges genetic code, AI, and choreography to create a unique dance that reinvents itself for every performance. Layering choreographic imprints over personal memoir and in dialogue with a specially designed algorithm based on McGregor’s DNA data, Autobiography upends the traditional nature of dance-making as artificial intelligence and instinct converge in creative authorship. Autobiography is performed by a cast of 10 dancers and is set to an original score by Jlin.

Wayne McGregor CBE is a multi-award-winning British choreographer and director internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. McGregor’s multi-dimensional works resulting from interactions with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines, and technological interventions have ensured his position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for almost three decades. He is the Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, encompassing creative collaboration in dance, film, music, visual art, technology, and science; learning and research programs; and a touring company of dancers Company Wayne McGregor. McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale, and is regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important dance companies around the world.

About Kaatsbaan Cultural Park

The mission of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is to provide an extraordinary environment for cultural innovation and excellence by providing artists at any stage of their careers with creative residencies at state-of-the-art facilities, and presenting audiences and communities with annual outdoor festivals, educational programs, and seasonal events. As both an incubator for creativity and presenter for world-class artists in dance, theater, music, film, poetry, and culinary and visual arts, Kaatsbaan provides artists with state-of-the-art dance studios, accommodations, an indoor theater, and outdoor stages. Sited on 153 Hudson River-adjacent acres, Kaatsbaan is free of urban facilities’ space and time constraints, allowing for exciting levels of artistic exploration, creative action, and achievement—just two hours north of New York City. Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is committed to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts as we aim to present, promote, and embrace programming that accurately reflects our society. We encourage a broadly diverse group of individuals to participate in our programs and join our Board and Staff, and insist on being inclusive of all peoples regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, or physical or mental ability.