Three curators of dance and the performing arts, Pam Tatge, Artistic and Executive Director, Jacob’s Pillow, Adam Weinert, Artistic Associate, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, and Elena Siyanko, Executive and Artistic Director, PS 21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, offer insights into festival programming. The curators begin from similar points of view, namely innovation, sustainability, diversity, and inclusion, but each curator’s season is unique.
Jacob’s Pillow, the world-renowned dance haven, located in Beckett, MA, was established by choreographer Ted Shawn in 1942. Pillow programming is exclusively dance, whereas Kaatsbaan, in Tivoli, NY, founded in 1990 by American Ballet Theatre stars, Martine van Hamel and Kevin McKenzie, with Gregory Cary and Bentley Roton, continues to present dance, but has advanced broader programming. Judy Grunberg, a former WAMC board member, founded PS 21 in 1999 to showcase dance. The programming has evolved into wide-reaching performance.
Programming reflects the interests of the curators. Considered, too, are audience preferences, the budget, needs of the performers, such as date availability, size of the stage, and performance that takes place outside or inside, and the overall arc of the programming. The venues support artist residencies, have developed educational programs and performances that attract the community, especially focusing on youth, and extend low cost or free performances and programs. All three cultural centers present site-specific performances on 100 acres (PS 21), 153 acres (Kaatsbaan), and 225 acres (Jacob’s Pillow) with enough space on which to stretch and groove. The venues are gracious, hospitable, and energized areas of respite and learning.
“Jacob’s Pillow made a commitment to bring back international artists,” says Tatge, an expensive endeavor after the pandemic. With an Italian mother raised in Brazil, and a father who was the head of the Peace Corps in French speaking Africa, Tatge “appreciates the power of culture and globalism to enrich and expand our lives.” The Pillow developed partnerships, for instance, with the Irish government that provided funds for programming the upcoming Oona Doherty the young and hailed Irish choreographer from July 26-29. Hip Hop Across the Pillow, in August, a festival within a festival, curated by Melanie George and Ali Rosa- Salas, honors the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop. Home to exceptional American artists, such as Mark Morris, Martha Graham and Michelle Dorrance, the nine-week festival, a mix of international and US artists, features performances, talks, exhibits and archives, every day of the week. Dances are developed in the Pillow Lab.
Siyanko offers adventurous, transdisciplinary, and often challenging work that highlights global and social issues. For the past two years, Europe, Africa, and the Americas have been represented by Contemporary Circus Arts (nouveau cirque), dance, theater, and global music. International artists are presented in collaboration with international partners. The discipline of circus arts, remarks Siyanko, "explores innovative uses of space, creative endeavor, and audience participation. It is an accessible art form." Siyanko searches for “important, interesting and talented (artists who) embrace the entire burning agenda of the modern world.” She looks for trends such as the Bolognese folk dance, polka chinata on July 29, entitled Save The Last Dance For Me, recently previewed in The New York Times. A native of Kyiv, Ukraine, Siyanko, spent formative years in the former Soviet Union. There, she was afforded free arts education and socialist healthcare. This experience, too, influences her curation. PS21 is especially aware of eco-responsibility and the ways to reimagine our relationship to the natural world.
Weinert, a child ballet dancer and notable performer of works by Ted Shawn, adopts a three-fold approach to curation that contributes to Kaatsbaan’s artistic vitality. Companies that are audience favorites return year after year offering a sense of continuity. Newer and younger voices are showcased. Kaatsbaan’s investment in artists over a sustained period encourages risk-taking; the artists push the boundaries of their craft. The spring season featured classical and neoclassical ballet, modern, postmodern, and contemporary dance. Other disciplines, such as new music, culinary arts, sculpture, nature walks, and film attest to the multifaceted nature of Kaatsbaan as a cultural hub. The Fall Festival kicks off in September with Kenneth MacMillan's Ballade, a ballet chamber work last seen in 1972.
Catherine Tharin danced with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. She teaches dance studies and technique, is an independent dance and performance curator, choreographs, writes about dance for Side of Culture, and is a reviewer and editor for The Dance Enthusiast. She also writes for The Boston Globe. Catherine lives in Pine Plains, New York and New York City.
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