PS21’s ‘The Dark’ Winter Festival Connects Columbia County Through Performance

On February 16, Chatham, New York’s PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance opened its first-ever, weeklong winter festival, The Dark. A sprawling slate of programming that intends to inspire and enlighten includes more than 80 performances by 60 international artists on site and at collaborative venues (some quite unexpected) across Columbia County. The vision of PS21’s artistic and executive director, Vallejo Gantner, the festival positions both the center and the county as cultural destinations throughout the winter.

For the inaugural festival program, Gantner and collaborators exceed expectations with both U.S. and world premieres through works of dance, music, theater, and performance. These range from Trisha Brown Dance Company’s “In Plain Site” at Chatham’s newly restored Masonic Hall to artist Andrew Schneider’s interactive theatrical installation, “N O W I S W H E N W E A R E (the stars),” which features 4,000 reactive LEDs and a 496-channel soundscape. There is a rumination on lullabies and an investigation of “dolce far niente” (the Italian concept of sweetness from doing nothing). And while festival passes are already sold out, single event tickets remain. To learn more—including the role of a sauna and ice plunge in performance art—Surface spoke with Gantner.

What inspired PS21’s winter celebration? Are there historic and even ancient inspirations?

I was raised in Australia, but with an American mum. Every couple of years she would bring us to Chicago to see our family there. My little brother and I would step out of O’Hare and get hit by this wall of cold. It was almost thrilling—cold at a level that was inconceivable. That thrill of sub-zero temperatures has never left me, so doing something in the cold is inherently exciting.

Apart from that, after watching the rhythm of this community and place for a year and experiencing festivals for 30 years, I wanted to amplify and create impact without getting stuck in binaries of high, low, good, and bad. This is a moment in the calendar when PS21 can completely transform its space and create something that’s truly different, perhaps even a ripple effect. We’ve hired over 120 people to help us put this festival on—not counting the 80+ artists.

Fundamentally we wanted to reflect the binaries of this moment—intense cold and warmth, isolation and assembly, darkness and light. This is the moment when the days begin to lengthen and we begin to hope that spring might finally arrive. It would be easy to point to an ancient inspiration, but there is none. This is about finding a light in the darkness of now—in our climate, in our culture. Finding artists who cut with scalpels into the existential questions that underpin our realities.

The programming is extensive. 60 artists, 80 performances. What was the curatorial effort behind this like?

It’s a blessing to have 25 years of programming, curating, watching, and asking questions. When we settled on this theme of ‘The Dark’ and began exploring the potential venues and sites and really discussing the impact that we wanted the festival to have, we knew who we needed. From Okwui to David Lang to Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, and Autumn Knight. We really thought about what would speak to people here—and about how we can bring great work directly to them, not insist that they fly across the world or even drive to our theatre to experience it.

My job isn’t to impose a radical curatorial thesis on everything and everyone—sometimes I wish I had such vision! Rather, I find pathways, moments and places for artists to speak to the audiences around them.

Can you speak to programming the festival at PS21 and across the county, and activating the sauna and ice skating?

At this moment, all sorts of arts organizations—from major museums, independent film crews, theatres and dance companies—are threatened by shifts in culture, consumption, politics, and philanthropy. The only way that we can succeed is through collaboration. It made sense to work with other organizations—in ideation, curation, and production. This is how we all thrive and how we create impact for those experiencing the work.

The fun part was bringing everyone on board—and we’re immensely grateful to every theatre, cafe, bar, cinema, barn, studio, and church who took a chance with us.

That being said, PS21 is our geographic center and we also wanted to activate our site and create reasons for people to embrace the season, the temperature, and the conditions on our campus. Aren’t saunas, a chainsaw-cut cold plunge, fire pits, hot chocolate, s’mores, and ice skating blindingly obvious?

Is there any programming you’d like to call attention to?

I’m genuinely proud of the community that we’ve galvanized around us. Those participating in a long-term set of projects with Mammalian Diving Reflex, performing and telling stories with Sophia Brous and Gundega Laivina’s Songs for the Dark—of being able to show a series of works from different artists—Kara-Lis Coverdale, David Lang, Ant Hampton, Tim Etchells and Sister Sylvester.

But really, the thing to draw attention to is the fact that this is a festival that rewards immersion—in wandering around Hudson or Chatham to see something in a bookstore, pub, or a cinema. The works themselves are also unconventionally delivered—by books and headphones, by 4,000 LED lights or a VR headset, by dancers in new locations and in new contexts. Every artist in the program works across disciplines: visual art, film, dance, music, theatre, live art.

Each has created something utterly unique, and in my opinion, utterly magical. Many of these artists have been awarded and celebrated from Venice to Lincoln Center, Basel, Sundance, Melbourne, Lagos, Shanghai, and Salzburg. This is a gathering of some of the world’s most extraordinary makers.