Kaatsbaan Cultural Park presents the 2025 Annual Festival in Tivoli, NY, from August 30 to September 27, 2025. The 2025 Annual Festival runs each weekend from Labor Day throughout September and includes thoughtful offerings and original performances by artists innovating in dance, music, film, archiving, storytelling, and more, featuring Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Nichole Canuso, Deborah Hay, Ayodele Casel, Kayla Farrish, Lori Goldston, among others! Festival tickets will be available beginning July 22 at https://kaatsbaan.org/performances-festivals.
Managing Director Naomi Miller says “Kaatsbaan looks forward to presenting a stellar lineup of artists whose works distinctly ground us in the present moment, pose questions, and encourage and ignite our imaginations. This year’s festival has come together from organic conversations with artists and the illuminating work of our Guest Curator, Michèle Steinwald.”
Guest Curator Michèle Steinwald shares, “It is an honor to be in conversation with Hudson Valley arts communities and support Kaatsbaan’s programming while anticipating our gathering this fall. Together, we’ll experience new works by artists who create authentically, and show up with great care and humanity.”
Steinwald continues, “For my first festival, I brought together artists and art forms closest to my heart. From tap dance (my first love) to the wide-ranging influence of choreographer Deborah Hay (the artist who most profoundly impacted my career), these events have been lovingly considered for audiences to settle in and be transported alongside the performers themselves.
I have long admired tap dancer and creator Ayodele Casel from a distance, so to be able to welcome her—and for her to develop new work specifically for Kaatsbaan—is a true honor. Artists such as Nichole Canuso and Lori Goldston—who I have long histories with—are gathering their collaborator dream teams for this festival, effectively raising the vibrations of how we offer artistic experiences with greater resonance and spiritual well-being.
I have had the privilege to previously work with BodyCartography Project, and Bridget Fiske and Joseph Lau of Project Auske, the artistic contributors to the festival’s Performance Lending Library. These free and accessible, self-guided audio experiences invite audience members and groups to explore the stunning natural landscape at Kaatsbaan in new ways, and consider engaging in movement at their own pace and on their own time.
Last year, I was fortunate to be introduced to Kayla Farrish’s work (audiences at Kaatsbaan already know the power of her choreography). While watching Farrish, the immediacy and voracity of her dancing lit me up and brought my being back into focus. The festival’s pairing of Farrish and Casel’s performances (September 19–21), and the deliberate placement of these incredible and necessary artists together is intentional and not to be missed.
We have infused this year’s festival with local favorites, such as the storytelling series The Porch, and international trailblazers, such as New York City’s legendary Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.
In this important time of global uprisings against unimaginable oppression and violence, I hold Canuso’s beliefs ‘in the strength and power of softness, the bravery of vulnerability, and the healing properties of playfulness’ near. It is through embodying our values and expressing our innermost desires that we continue to fuel this fire of change together.”
2025 Annual Festival Lineup
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Another Another History of Collage
Saturday, August 30 at 2pm and 7pm
Sunday, August 31 at 2pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
$45 General Admission | $25 Students with ID
In Another Another History of Collage, the full company revisits The History of Collage, the last collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane before Arnie’s death. Originally created in 1988, the remounting is part of a legacy project for the company; looking back to look forward. Kaatsbaan audiences will experience a preview of the first time Collage will be performed in over 20 years. The piece recalls the excitement the two artists shared as they set out to reconsider dance spectacle during the 1980s art scene. Another Another History of Collage blends dance, music, and spoken word, exploring themes of identity.
Funding is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Kaatsbaan has been recommended for a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts for this program.
Art Walk with Visual Arts Curator + Artists
Saturday, August 30 at 4pm
Lobby Gallery + Grounds (indoors and outdoors)
Free
Move through the gallery and grounds with the exhibition’s curator and artists, learning more about their works, how the works interact with surrounding environments, and considerations of installation, locality, and artistry. Reception follows.
Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths
Lunar Retreat
Saturday, September 6 at 4pm and 7pm
Sunday, September 7 at 2pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
$30 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
Timed with September’s full moon, Lunar Retreat is an interactive, multi-sensory performance inspired by the gradual distance growing between the Moon and Earth. Set within the hallways, grounds, and studios of Kaatsbaan, this immersive journey invites audiences to wander, witness, and reflect on how we move through care, grief, and transformation—both individually and collectively.
Created by choreographer and 2025 USA Fellow Nichole Canuso in collaboration with ocean explorer and visual artist Rebecca Rutstein, experimental sound designer Bobby McElver, and a visionary team of designers and performers, Lunar Retreat opens a space for poetic, playful, and communal connection with the shifting rhythms of our planetary bodies. Lunar Retreat invites us to reflect on our deep evolutionary ties to the ocean and the moon, reminding us that we are all interconnected with the natural world.
The presentation of Lunar Retreat was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
The Porch
Friday, September 12 at 7pm
Meadow Stage (outdoors)
$25 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
The Porch is a live storytelling series that brings members of our Hudson Valley community together for an intimate evening of curated, true stories told without notes. A cast of local residents, who work with The Porch to shape stories from their lives, tell varied and affecting tales under the late-summer night sky. Food and refreshments will be available before and during the performances.
Deborah Hay
Turn Everywhere: Deborah Hay on film/in person
Saturday, September 13 at 7pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
$25 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
“I cannot think of anything else in my life where there is so much unlearning and learning happening at the same time.”—Deborah Hay about dance
An evening of insightful and meditative documentaries on the interminable, inimitable, experimental choreographer Deborah Hay, her artistic relationships, and her creative process. Films by Peter Humble and David Young (Alignment is everywhere), and Becky Edmunds
(Turn Your F^*king Head). Discussion with Hay to follow.
Alignment is everywhere was shot on a 16mm hand-cranked camera using expired and hand-processed film stock, and marks Hay’s return after the loss of theater innovator and dear friend, Margaret Cameron. Filmed in 2019 at Indented Head, near Melbourne, Australia, the short work is a gentle contemplation of how one “serves a tree” through death.
Turn Your F^*king Head documents the final edition of Hay’s iconic Solo Performance Commissioning Project, in which participating artists from around the world receive Hay’s most recent solo choreography. Filmed in 2012 at Findhorn community, Scotland, the poetics and puzzles of Hay’s instructions are visually combined with the landscape of the historic ecovillage.
Ayodele Casel
Freedom… In Progress and new work
Friday, September 19 at 7pm, post-show artist talk led by Kayla Farrish
Saturday, September 20 at 4pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
In partnership with Works & Process
$25 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
$40 for both Ayodele Casel + Kayla Farrish
Building from last year’s critically acclaimed phenomenon Freedom… In Progress, tapper Ayodele Casel once again creates a new work by ambitiously joining jazz legends Max Roach and Cecil Taylor—from their uncompromising 1979 improvised recording—with rhythmic love, control, sensitivity, and liberation.
Casel is sought after as a “tap dancer and choreographer of extraordinary depth,” and a “force of wit and wonder” (New York Times). Known for her highly skilled and expansive improvisation, Casel’s projects include her concert and Bessie Award-winning film Chasing Magic, and her Drama Desk-nominated work as tap choreographer for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl.
This project is made possible, in part, through funding from the County of Dutchess and Destination Dutchess (formerly Dutchess Tourism, Inc.) and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.
Kayla Farrish
DOCILE and A Beast
Saturday, September 20 at 7pm, post-show artist talk led by Ayodele Casel
Sunday, September 21 at 2pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
$25 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
$40 for both Ayodele Casel + Kayla Farrish
Two brand-new works from the insatiable dancemaker Kayla Farrish (2024 Annual Festival, Limón Dance Company commissioned choreographer) that draw on Black histories, jazz’s reimagination, and magical realism.
DOCILE is a study on untaming, a play on light and darkness, inspired by James Baldwin’s seminal questioning Notes of a Native Son as he bridged the decision of finding freedom outside of America’s borders or returning home in the 1960s to commit himself to resistance movements. Turning towards and colliding with a vibration of freedom, this work witnesses a Black woman in a discovery of truth and a journey of release, asking “What transformation and wildness is possible in reclamation and seeing our full humanity?”
A Beast is an intimate and eruptive conversation between two people as they make sense of one another. They hold one another and listen, opening up to greater depth and feeling. Their words and songs spill into flight and physical risk. They uncover their personal power within, unraveling and finding themselves through the confrontation.
Lori Goldston
Sound, Light, Movement: solo cello + handmade film
In partnership with Interbay Cinema Society
Friday, September 26 at 7pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
$25 General Admission | $15 Students with ID
Live music by Goldston; silent films by Bill Basquin (US), Jon Behrens (US, 1964–2022), Derek Jenkins (US/Canada), Anna Kipervaser (US), Lucie Leszez (France) + Stefano Canapa (Italy), Rocío Mesa (Spain), Wenhua Shi (US), Vicky Smith (UK), Kalpana Subramanian (US), and Leandro Varela (Argentina).
An evening of moving image that opens with Stan’s Salon, a hand-painted film by Interbay Cinema Society (ICS) founder, Jon Behrens (1964–2022), created in 1997 after attending one of Stan Brakhage’s film salons. Remaining selections, curated by filmmaker and ICS executive director, Caryn Cline, specifically for Lori Goldston, are drawn from ICS’ Engauge Film Festival’s recent archives and evoke landscapes near and far, internal and surrounding. In early 2025, Goldston traveled through Europe with this special collaboration, performing in London, Bristol, Bologna, Rome, Milan, Brussels, and Bremen before coming to Tivoli to share with Kaatsbaan audiences.
Lori Goldston plays written, traditional, and spontaneous work on cello, and works as a composer, sound artist, and widely varied collaborator. Goldston was the touring cellist for Nirvana from 1993–1994 and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York. Her voice as a cellist is singular, deeply textured and original, investigating thresholds, instability, and connections between far-flung modes of thought.
Trailer VIEW
Lori Goldston with Melanie Dyer and Gwen Laster
Feedback Sonata
String trio concert with Melanie Dyer (violist), Lori Goldston (cello), and Gwen Laster (violinist)
Saturday Sept 27 at 7pm
Meadow stage (outdoors)
$45 General Admission | $25 Students with ID
Feedback Sonata is the newest work by composer/cellist Lori Goldston for string trio, written to be performed with violist Melanie Dyer and violinist Gwen Laster. Performing together for the first time for this bespoke concert, these three powerhouse musicians combine to embody the essential convergence of jazz, classical, folk, and experimental music. Their collective histories include performing with and recording credits spanning Sun Ra Arkestra, Aretha Franklin, Nirvana, Harlem Arts Ensemble, David Byrne, Rihanna, Tyler the Creator, Earth, Jon Batiste, and so so so many more.
Lori Goldston plays written, traditional, and spontaneous work on cello, and works as a composer, sound artist, and widely varied collaborator. Goldston was the touring cellist for Nirvana from 1993–1994 and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York. Her voice as a cellist is singular, deeply textured and original, investigating thresholds, instability, and connections between far-flung modes of thought.
Melanie Dyer is a violist/composer who finds freedom in multiple artistic disciplines as means of exploring sonic language and possibility, reflecting and responding to lived experience in the 21st-century zeitgeist. Her body of work includes viola performance, music composition, theater, poetry/prose, and visual arts.
Gwen Laster is an adventurous composer, arranger, and orchestrator, and was just awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship. Laster is a classically-trained artist/violinist with a deep appreciation for America’s musical history and a scholar of African-American musical heritage, plus a socially conscious activist and educator who understands the power of music to reach and touch everyday people. Her playing is poignant, descriptive, and always relevant.
MAKERS’ CORNER
Deborah Hay’s Performance Club
Friday, September 12 at 1pm
Saturday, September 13 at 1pm
Studio Complex (indoors)
Free
“How I may see our universe, acknowledging its infinitude as I dance, is my survival.”
— Deborah Hay
Performance Club is modeled on library etiquette. It is conceived as a timed research experiment for artists and individual audience members. At Kaatsbaan, Deborah Hay has 15 minutes to experience a work-in-progress in the presence of the audience. As an audience member, you have 45 minutes to process any reciprocal responses to the live event you just experienced. It may be writing, drawing, dancing, sleeping, meditating, etc. No one imposes their research onto anyone else. Performance Club is an opportunity to have space and time to notice how performer and audience are both influenced/inspired by one another, a rarely acknowledged outcome of live performance. Outstanding is the absence of verbal exchange of any kind during the one hour. Afterwards, yes.
PERFORMANCE LENDING LIBRARY
Two audio-guided physical experiences adapted for Kaatsbaan’s campus, each under 30 minutes. Bring a blanket, your smart phone/tablet (data streaming required) and earbuds/headphones, and be led into a range of embodied performance practices with your imagination as the site of the artwork.
While created as a solo practice, you can synchronize doing it with friends as a group or simply go off on a solitary journey. Set up a spot anywhere on the Kaatsbaan campus, alongside a visual art sculpture or a tree, blend into the landscape at the edge of the forest or out in the middle of an open field, and begin at your own pace.
At Kaatsbaan, you can find the Lending Library QR codes inside the Studio Complex lobby and at Concessions. Individuals and groups can contact 845-757-5106 x117 or boxoffice@kaatsbaan.org for more information and support. When onsite for the festival, Box Office staff can offer suggestions for places to anchor your trip and answer any questions you may have.
An Absurdist Archive of Isolation: a full body workout radio play (Bridget Fiske (AUS/UK), Joseph Lau (AUS/UK), Stelios Manousakis (NL), and Stephanie Pan (NL))
TRT: 26 minutes
Free
An immersive participatory radio play for solo audiences that unfolds and transforms your environment through music, your movement, and text. There will be time to move with fury and collapse into the folds of time. It is all as you choose.
Resisting Extinction: dying and decomposing practice (BodyCartography Project (NO))
TRT: 25 minutes
Free
Resisting Extinction offers practices for living and dying together on, in, and with a damaged Earth. A meditative and low-impact experience, dying and decomposing practice is an excerpt of a larger performance work and is an invitation to prepare for potential climate realities.
ONGOING
2025 Visual Arts Exhibition
Open Mondays to Fridays, 9:00 am–5:00 pm and two hours before festival events
Lobby Gallery + Grounds (indoors and outdoors)
Free
Curated by Hilary Greene and includes contemporary works by regional artists: Neil Enggist, Freeda Electra Handelsman, Daisuke Kiyomiya, Heidi Lanino, Ian McMahon, Portia Munson, Aurora Robson, and Jennifer Zackin, as well as two, newly installed bronze works by world-renowned, 20th-century sculptor, Gaston Lachaise.
The 2025 Annual Festival is made possible, in part, through funding of individual programs by the following entities and partners:
For more information, contact Michelle Tabnick michelle@michelletabnickpr.com or info@kaatsbaan.org.
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 festivals, educational programs, and seasonal events. As both an incubator for creativity and presenter for world-class artists in dance, theater, music, film, spoken and written word, and culinary and visual arts, Kaatsbaan provides artists with 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.
With humility, we acknowledge that the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park rests on the unceded homelands of the Lenape, The Original People; the Muh he con ne ok, The Peoples of the Water that are Never Still; and the Schaghticoke, The Gathered Waters. Due to forced land cessions and removals, their seats of government are now located in various parts of New England, Canada, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. We honor and pay our respects to their ancestors, present and future, and we recognize their continuing presence on this land. For additional information, please visit https://kaatsbaan.org/about
