At Kaatsbaan, curator Michèle Steinwald thinks about dance as a conversation between artists, audiences, stories, and the landscape itself.
Kaatsbaan Cultural Park’s 2026 multidisciplinary Annual Festival takes place across three Saturdays: Aug. 29, Sept. 5, and Sept. 12, bringing dance, music, theater, and storytelling to indoor and outdoor stages in Tivoli.
“It’s three almost-mini festivals within one festival,” Steinwald says.
“A lot of the festival grew organically,” she recalls. After spending a month last year in the town of Tivoli in Dutchess County, New York she listened to artists in the community, collected “everybody’s stories,” and built the festival from those conversations.
“This year really leaned into storytelling,” Steinwald explained. “It comes in all different forms, [including] a story ballet and a playwright’s platform where the playwrights are directly sharing their words.”
But for Steinwald, the festival’s storytelling isn’t confined to what happens onstage. Steinwald looked for ways to connect the festival to the region, including the history and culture surrounding many of the presented works. She describes the process as finding ways “to animate and to center those stories.”
Anna Sperber's Bow Echo, originally created for a 15,000-square-foot rooftop in New York City, will be reimagined for Kaatsbaan's meadow.
For Sperber, the piece has always been site responsive. The rooftop brought the sounds of the city, including “sirens and radios from vehicles passing by.”
The meadow will introduce new elements: the grass, the wind, the birds, and the openness of the landscape. “It almost feels like a new dance,” Sperber reflects.
The environment is not simply a backdrop. Sperber’s materials are part of the choreography, and the sounds they create become part of the score.
The whooshing of the flags is one example of how the objects extend the dancers’ “reach into space,” says Sperber. “The resonance of our actions creating the sound score” became central to the work.
The festival’s final weekend brings a different kind of energy with Courtney “Balenciaga” Washington and MasterZ at Work performing "All Inclusive" and "The 24/7 Diner."
Washington describes a company built from many movement histories, including African influences, along with ballroom, voguing, jazz, and hip hop.
“We all came from different places,” Washington says of the dancers, who have worked together for 10 years. What matters most she says, is seeing “their individuality.”
Her choreography balances precision and freedom. “I don’t want my eyes to wander,” she says. “The movement should be clear and clean and sharp.” Washington’s work will close the festival with what she calls a chance to “bring the fire.”
Alongside these performances, the festival includes choreographer Kade Pyle’s story ballet, the Six Nations/Haudenosaunee playwrights’ platform, singer-songwriter Valerie June, choreographers and performers Lucy Sexton and Adrienne Truscott, Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, and the performance collective the Bearded Ladies Cabaret.
For Steinwald, each work stands on its own while also being “in conversation with the other works of the day,” Steinwald said. “I’m really drawn to artists who have clear intention and values based in their work. The creativity is rooted in this integrity.”
And the hope for audiences after they leave Kaatsbaan?
“That we’re stronger together,” Steinwald says. “That creativity is just life force.”
Catherine Tharin is a choreographer, writer, curator, and educator. Her writing on dance has appeared in The Dance Enthusiast, Interlocutor, Side of Culture, and the Boston Globe. Tharin currently curates The Dance Series at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains, New York, and dance film at The Moviehouse in Millerton, New York.
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