Photo courtesy of the artist

Saturday, August 29
1:00 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission (with ID)
50 minutes
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

Filled with inspired stories and present-day resonance, audiences are invited to honor earth, spirit, and community through rhythms and rituals in this lively celebration of prehispanic peoples, namely the Mexika, Purépecha, Zapotec, Totonaca, Maya, Olmec, and Tolteca, and their dances.

Founded in 2003, Calpulli Danza Mexicana has reached millions of audiences through its various cultural performances, arts-in-education programming, and community classes and events. Based in New York City, Calpulli provides a home for artists and audiences to explore a range of themes through a Mexican folkloric lens. Calpulli creates and tours award-winning original dance theater productions, featuring folkloric and contemporary dance, rich traditional and theatrical wardrobe, and folkloric music and new compositions. Calpulli also delivers free and donation-based music and dance lessons to families of all backgrounds in community settings, along with school-based programs for students, seniors, and educators.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo by Mikhail Lipyanskiy

Saturday, August 29
3:00 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission (with ID)
45 minutes
Black Box Theater (indoors)

Based on the story ballet from 1870, Ballez’s choreographic reimagining exposes us to the interdependent relationship between the Doll-maker and the Doll creations, bringing to light the tenderness and perseverance of new life, the joy and support found in desire and connection, and the love and humanity that transforms and thrives in our relations with one another. Live original score by Lavinia Eloise Bruce and Scott Killian.

Ballez was founded in 2011 by choreographer and educator Kade Pyle. Ballez has created four original, full-length story-ballets: The Firebird, a Ballez (2013, Danspace Project), Sleeping Beauty & the Beast (2016, La MaMa), Giselle of Loneliness (2021, The Joyce Theater) and Travesty Doll Play Ballez (after Coppélia) (2024, Chelsea Factory) and has been awarded grants from NYSCA, Harkness, Mellon Foundation, among others, and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Gibney, MTA, among others. By centering the experiences of trans, non-binary, and genderqueer dancers in practice and creation, Ballez demands that the form of ballet embrace the vitality of positive, inclusive change. Pyle currently teaches ballet at Eugene Lang and Marymount Manhattan Colleges, and for professional dancers at Gibney Dance.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo by Maria Baranova

Saturday, August 29
5:00 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission (with ID)
Mountain Field (outdoors)
60 minutes

This Bessie award-winning dance, originally created for a 15,000-square-foot rooftop in Brooklyn, will be transposed on and for the land at Kaatsbaan. By placing the performers and their sculptural instruments in concert within the sense-filling, ever-present elements of the natural environment, the movement accumulates in a visual and sonic collaboration with the grasses, the trees, the sky, and the expanse.

Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer Anna Sperber is a 2026–27 Princeton Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts. She received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Choreographer for Bow Echo. Her work has been presented and commissioned by venues including The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater, The Chocolate Factory, Roulette, Dance Theater Workshop, and the American Dance Festival. She has received fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. Sperber founded and ran BRAZIL, a studio and intimate performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn 2004–2014 and Sunset Space 2018–2020. www.annasperber.com

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Saturday, August 29
7:00 PM
$55 General Admission, $45 Student Admission (with ID)
75–90 minutes
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

A rare jewel-box performance with the irresistible and multidimensional singer-songwriter, Valerie June, in celebration of her new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles. Described as “a necessary reminder… that happiness is just as potent a tool for beating back the darkness as anger” (Paste Magazine).

Known for her distinctive voice and singing style, “[Valerie June’s] every quiver bespeaks emotional honesty” (New Yorker). As a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and three-time Americana Music Honors and Awards nominee, June weaves fresh medicinal downloads of love, sweetness, goodness, and joy with songs that have flowed through her for years. She has recorded three best-selling solo albums and written songs for legendary artists such as Mavis Staples and The Blind Boys of Alabama. She has been praised by Bob Dylan and shared the stage with myriad artists including John Prine, Norah Jones, Tyler Childers, Dinosaur Jr., Booker T. Jones, Emmylou Harris, M. Ward, Robert Plant, Meshell Ndegeocello, Dave Matthews, Angelique Kidjo, Willie Nelson, Brandi Carlile, and Elvis Costello. When not touring, she splits her time between Tennessee and New York.

Valerie June’s performance 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.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photos courtesy of the artists

Saturday, September 5
1:00 PM
Arrive around 12:00 PM to participate in a pre-performance fire-lighting ceremony.
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission
Meadow Stage (outdoors)

Playwrights’ Platform is a newly created live anthology, responsive to the needs of boundary-bending playwrights and focused on the stories central to their writing. Audiences are invited into the hearts and minds of these award-winning theater artists to explore each turn of phrase and unique worldview.

Vickie Ramirez, Ty Defoe, and Jeanette Harrison—Democracy Cycle commission awardees (PAC NYC)—embody Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace through a journey that offers insight and lessons into unity, justice, and consensus-based decision-making with Six Nations: One Fire. In partnership with Bard Center for Indigenous Studies.

Rachel Jendrzejewski once described her writing process as pushing words around on the page just as her artist parents had pushed paint on their canvases, and a way “to pay attention to the world” around her. Rachel died of breast cancer in July 2025. Rachel’s longtime friends and collaborators, choreographer Terry Hempfling and actor Lauren Lewis, read as the two moon characters from encyclopedia, her play published ten years ago by Spout Press. Directed by Marcela Michelle.

Rose Jarboe in Mx. Rogers' Neighborhood: You Can Never Go Down The Drain channels the beloved, critically acclaimed, PBS-hosted, forever wholesome Fred Rogers, all the while visiting iconic neighborhood moments anew and asking some earnest questions about irony through some gentle audience participation.

About the Playwrights

Rachel Jendrzejewski (1982–2025) was an interdisciplinary artist and writer who frequently collaborated with choreographers, musicians, and multimedia artists to explore wide-ranging performative vocabularies. Her work was developed and/or presented by Walker Art Center, Padua Playwrights, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Tricklock Company, Joe’s Pub, The Wild Project, RISD, MASS MoCA, and ICA/Boston, among others. Published texts include MERONYMY (53rd State Press), In Which _______ and Others Discover the End, a collaboration with SuperGroup (Plays Inverse), and encyclopedia (Spout Press). Jendrzejewski was a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye in Minneapolis.

As an Indigiqueer citizen of the Oneida and Anishinaabe Nations, Ty Defoe is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner whose work thrives in the fluid spaces between forms: art, climate justice, and cultural activism, challenging settler colonial binaries. Guided by a global commitment to story, he has been honored with the Jonathan Larson Award and the Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, and supported through fellowships with the Sundance Institute, MacDowell, Kennedy Center’s Next 50, and Pop Culture Collaborative’s Becoming America initiative. As co-founder of Indigenous Direction, Defoe has led landmark projects that bridge Native and non-Native communities through the arts, reaching audiences ranging from Marquette University’s First Native American Film Festival to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Jeanette Harrison is a multi-hyphenate director and writer working in theater, film, and television. She believes in combating invisibility and harmful representations by telling contemporary, complex Native stories written by Native authors. After serving as the co-founder and artistic director of AlterTheater for 17 years, Harrison joined Artists Repertory Theater, one of two LORT theaters in Portland, as their third Artistic Director. She is currently the co-director of the Arts Learning Project for Native Youth (ALP4NY), and creative director of Native Performing Arts Network, which began as Native Theater Project, under the umbrella of Bag&Baggage Productions.

Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora) is a founding member of Chukalokoli and Amerinda Theater. Her work has been developed and/or produced at Native Voices at the Autry, AlterTheater, and The Public Theater. Honors: Resident, New Dramatists through 2027; Winner, 2020 Smith Prize for Political Theater (NNPN); The Kilroys, Honorary Mention 2019 for Pure Native and 2014 for Standoff At Hwy#37; Semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2019; Semi-finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference 2018; Alumna, Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group (2009). Other productions include: Glenburn 12 WP - Summer Shorts at 59E59, Smoke - Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group at Pershing Square Signature Center. Published: Monologues for Actors of Color: Women, Monologues for Actors of Color: Men, and Contemporary Plays by Women of Color Edition 2: (Routledge Press). Member: Dramatists Guild, PEN America. Consultant: Outer Range for Amazon TV.

Rose Jarboe is a director, producer, writer, performer, visual artist, and the founding artistic director of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. For the past 15 years, she has created and performed work for Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, Wilma Theater, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation, FringeArts, and Opera Philadelphia. Jarboe was named best drag performer by Philadelphia Magazine, is a 2022 Transformation Grant awardee (Leeway Foundation) and a 2025 Pew Fellow. She has toured and directed original work to Seattle (Seattle Symphony), New Zealand (Performance Arcade), Australia (Malthouse Theater), Lincoln Center’s American Songbook Series (PBS), and Works & Process. She has written and directed original cabarets for opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo and is the drag doula of Stephanie Blythe. Commissions include Rose: You Are Who You Eat (Works and Process), touring to FringeArts, La MaMa, and Wooly Mammoth, and The Rose Garden at The Fabric Workshop & Museum and On the Boards. More at www.beardedladiescabaret.com, and @johnjarbeaux and @roseeatme.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.
  

Photos courtesy of the artists

Saturday, September 5
3:00 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission
Black Box Theater (indoors)

Playwrights’ Platform is a newly created live anthology, responsive to the needs of boundary-bending playwrights and focused on the stories central to their writing. Audiences are invited into the hearts and minds of these award-winning theater artists to explore each turn of phrase and unique worldview.

Sylvan Oswald builds worlds of language that are alternately messy and meticulous, obsessive and sparse, heady and embodied. Here, he shares material from I Leave Saint Cloud, a prismatic montage anchored by a Jean Cocteau-like figure, an Icarus plummeting through his own life, addicted to art-making, opium and beautiful young men.

Actor and poet Jim Fletcher, composer and cellist Lori Goldston, and composer and sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson collage the sonic and visual worlds of 20th- and 21st-century film filtered through the densely emotional and psychically charged resonance of early Yiddish Theatre. Pulling from the texts of Ben Hecht, Sholem Asch, Bertolt Brecht, and Isaac Babel, among others, they pose questions about freedom, connection, resistance, violence, dizzying shifts in the understanding of humanness, and cultural inheritance.

Theater/dance/performance artists & makers Lucy Sexton (one half of DANCENOISE) and Adrienne Truscott (one half of Wau Wau Sisters) tell a gritty, glamourous, 1970s-East Village-punk rock-feminist fairytale set to the music of Blondie, in Blonde as Hell.

About the Playwrights and Collaborators:

Sylvan Oswald creates plays, texts, publications, and video. Recent projects include the theatrical essay Trainers (Oberon Books, Gate Theatre, London) and the performance text High Winds (Fusebox, TBA). His plays include A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theatre, San Diego), Sun Ra (Joe’s Pub, Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab), Pony (Northwestern University Press, About Face Theater, Chicago), and Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb). Other writings include “Towards a Trans Theater,” (Methuen Drama Handbook on Gender and Theater), “My Butch Musical” (Little Joe), and “Cut Piece” on play formatting (3-Hole Press). Oswald is a Guggenheim Fellow and an alum of New Dramatists. He is head of playwriting at UCLA and he is currently at work on an eco-feminist sci-fi musical with composer/lyricist Tova Katz.

Described as “a stalwart of the New York avant-garde scene” by the New York Times, Jim Fletcher is a performer and a founding member of New York City Players theater company with Richard Maxwell, his working partner for more than 20 years. He is part of Elevator Repair Service’s internationally renowned production of Gatz, winning an Obie Award for his performance work in a staging of the full text of the novel The Great Gatsby. He created the monologue Sight Is the Sense That Dying People Tend to Lose First with Tim Etchells, is currently performing and making shows with The Wooster Group, and can be seen in Jordan Strafer’s film installation DISSONANCE at the 2026 Whitney Biennial.

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer, and teacher from Seattle. Her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time, and geography. Collaborators and/or bosses include Earth, Nirvana, Mirah, Jessika Kenney, Ilan Volkov, Eyvind Kang, Stuart Dempster, David Byrne, Terry Riley, Jherek Bischoff, Malcom Goldstein, Steve Von Till, Lonnie Holley, Cat Power, Christian Rizzo and Sophie Laly, Lynn Shelton, and many more. Her work has been commissioned by and/or performed at the Kennedy Center, Sydney Festival, Cineteca Nacional de México, Tectonics Festival, Frye Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival, WNYC, Paris Fashion Week, On the Boards, Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Jewish Film Festival, Joe’s Pub, the Stone, University of Chicago, and venues large and small throughout North America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.

Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree interdisciplinary artist, director, and composer. Her practice explores listening as a way of knowing and relating, which is shaped by Indigenous resonance, spatial perception, and embodied vulnerability. Working with psychoacoustic tones, algorithmic systems, and sculptural spatialization as materials, she composes spaces that shift awareness, inviting deep relational encounters between bodies, technologies, and the land. Thompson’s work has been presented by CTM Berlin, MUTEK, Onassis Foundation, ImagineNative, Pioneer Works, PICA, PSNY, among others. A current Onassis ONX Studio member, she has been in residence at Pioneer Works, MIT OpenDoc Lab with the Indigenous Screen Office of Canada, and HERVISIONS x Arebyte (UK). She was a founding member of the Working Consortium in developing First Nations Performing Arts.

Lucy Sexton has worked as a choreographer, director, dramaturg, film producer, and arts advocate. She and Anne Iobst created and continue to perform as DANCENOISE. Started in the 1980s East Village club scene, they went on to perform at Lincoln Center, win a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award, tour internationally, and open the new Whitney Museum in 2015. She developed and directed Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, with Kathleen Russo, and produced the documentaries The Legend of Leigh Bowery, directed by Charles Atlas, and TURNING, a concert film by Charles Atlas and Anohni, featuring Anohni and the Johnsons. Most recently, she developed and directed singer/songwriter Eszter Balint’s I Hate Memory at Joe’s Pub. Sexton currently leads New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, a cultural advocacy coalition working to strengthen the creative sector in every community.

Adrienne Truscott is a choreographer, circus acrobat, dancer, writer, storyteller, actor, and comedian. Her work crosses lines and methodologies from dance, theater, comedy, and performance art, presented as short drag club acts or evening-length pieces, dances, one-lady plays, group pieces, and solos. She received an inaugural 2014 Doris Duke Impact Artist Award and a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant for Theater/Performance Art. Her solo comedic work, collaborations, and group choreographic works have been presented at Sydney Opera House, Just For Laughs, Darwin Festival, PS122, Joe’s Pub, The Kitchen, Edinburgh Fringe, among others. The Wau Wau Sisters, her collaboration with Tanya Gagne, won the 2009 Herald Angel Award and influenced experimental circus and cabaret. Her show Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! won the 2013 Edinburgh Foster's Panel-Prize. Truscott can be seen around Tivoli and is the resident host of Bard College’s Spiegeltent.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photos courtesy of the artists

Saturday, September 5
7:00 PM
$45 General Admission, $35 Student Admission
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

CRICKETS: Concert and DJ Dance Party. Musicians Roddy Bottum (Faith No More), Michael O’Neill (MEN), and JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), supercharge the night with their messy minimalist punk-funk-electro-rant-queer-guitar-synthesizer-drum-machine stories. “A thumping new reprisal of toxic masculinity... delightful and delirious.” (Rolling Stone)

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, AAAHHHHHH: A Sing/Scream/Shout-Along Cabaret. For all their favorite people—misfits, rabble-rousers, chanteuses, and the people who love and need them—the Beards have invited special guest musicians and selected songs for an evening of singing, of stories, of community, and the power of coming together for a future filled with hope. Hosted by Jarbeaux and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret with special guests, Carmine Covelli on drums and V. Shayne Frederick on keys. 

About The Bearded Ladies Cabaret:

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret is a queer arts organization that sits on your lap and sings you a story. Whether it’s an opera, a home-made cabaret, a musical walking tour, or a show on a truck, the Beards employ song, spectacle, storytelling, and heart to welcome audiences into moments of joy, healing, and subversion. Through sharing original pieces and creating bespoke platforms for performance at home in Philadelphia, nationally, and abroad, they nurture artistic connections, with the belief in creating art, artistic spaces, and community rooted in the values of care, consent, transparency, clear and authentic communication, continual learning and accessibility. Their work has been seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eastern State Penitentiary, Opera Philadelphia, Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, Works & Process, and Lincoln Center. Their signature programs, The Beardmobile and LATE NIGHT SNACKS, have provided a stage for over 500 queer and nightlife artists. beardedladiescabaret.com and @beardedladiescabaret

About Crickets:

CRICKETS, an intentionally minimal punk art dance band, formed in 2018 and released their debut album on Muddguts Records in the spring of 2020. Performances include The Kitchen, Basilica Soundscape, and Pioneer Works for Laura Parnes’s multiplatform installation film Tour Without End.

JD Samson (Vocals, Drum Machines) is a musician, composer, DJ, writer, performance artist, and educator whose work examines the relationship between the body, sound, and identity in popular music and live performance. Samson first gained recognition as a member of the groundbreaking electronic feminist punk band Le Tigre, alongside Johanna Fateman and Kathleen Hanna. www.jdsamson.info

Michael O’Neill (Guitar/Yells and Claps) is a performing artist and a musician from Brooklyn. After graduating from Hampshire College, he moved to Chicago, where he formed the band Princess and became an organizer of Texas Ballroom, a DIY performance/event space. In 2006, he relocated to Brooklyn and joined The Ladybug Transistor. Soon after he was a founding member of the group MEN with JD Samson. MEN is a music/art collaborative project whose focus is the radical potential of dance music. www.michaeloneill.info

Roddy Bottum (Synthesizer/Yells and Claps) is a musician, writer, creator, and actor based in New York City. He started the band Faith No More in San Francisco in the early 1980s and toured the world, selling millions of records. In 1992, he came out of the closet and blew open the spectrum of what being gay in the world of rock music meant. That same year, he formed the critically acclaimed band Imperial Teen, cited as the original pioneers of alternative queer rock. In New York City since 2010, Bottum has performed and created records with Nastie Band and Man on Man, a band with his partner, Joey Holman. He is developing his Sasquatch opera project into a musical.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Aurora Robson: Gypsy Moths, Sharon Broit: Outside In, Thea Berman: Odyssey (left to right, top to bottom)

Sunday, September 6
1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Free Admission with RSVP
Outdoor grounds and indoor Lobby Gallery

Join Curator Hilary Greene and exhibition artists for a walk through the Sixth Annual Visual Arts Exhibition at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park. Earthly Delights includes artistic works evoking planets, plants, insects, and other biological forms erupting out of the mystical Kaatsbaan landscape. These unique pieces created by nine contemporary artists working predominantly in the Hudson Valley offer an inspiring alchemy of structure, form, beauty, and soul. 

This season, Aurora Robson returns with a tree-climbing, recycled-plastic installation new to Kaatsbaan. Joining her, Ian McMahon’s barn-mounted geometric relief, and Portia Munson’s mystical banner are six new artists: Thea Berman’s figurative oils and Sharon Broit’s biological abstracts in the gallery; Laura Battle’s esoteric ceramic clouds, Kris Perry’s machine creatures, and a spiritual carving by Nadia Yaron on the grounds; and sensorial videos by Virginia L. Montgomery mounted in the Stanford White Barn. In addition, we are honored to continue to exhibit two of Gaston Lachaise’s world-renowned bronzes on long-term loan by the Lachaise Foundation.

Photos courtesy of the artists

Friday, September 11
7:00 PM
Free Admission with an RSVP
Black Box Theater

A generous and candid conversation between festival choreographers Courtney “Balenciaga” Washington (MasterZ at Work), and Ronald K. Brown and Arcell Cabuag (EVIDENCE), facilitated by choreographer Souleymane Badolo (Assistant Professor of Dance, Bard College) around their artistic lineages, dance influences, and daily inspirations. Free and open for everyone to enjoy.

About the Artists:

Raised in Brooklyn, Ronald K. Brown is the recipient of the Martha Hill Mid-Career Achievement Award (2024), American Dance Guild Lifetime Achievement Award (2024), and a Dance Teacher Award of Distinction (2024). Other awards include the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award (2020), Dance Magazine Award (2018), and Samuel H. Scripps/ADF Award (2018), among others. Brown received an AUDELCO Award for choreography in Regina Taylor’s award-winning play Crowns, two Black Theater Alliance Awards, and Fred & Adele Astaire Award for Outstanding Choreography in the Tony Award-winning Porgy and Bess, adapted by Suzan Lori Parks. Ronald K. Brown is Co-Artistic Director of The Billie Holiday Theatre’s Youth Arts Academy and a member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society. Brown has set works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, among others. He has collaborated with Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya, Craig G. Harris, Ernie McClintock’s Jazz Actors Theater, choreographers Patricia Hoffbauer and Rokiya Kone, and composers Jason Moran, Arturo O’Farrill, Meshell Ndegeocello, and many more.

Arcell Cabuag is a first-generation Filipino-American from San Jose, California. In New York City, he attended the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and met Ronald K. Brown. He joined EVIDENCE as their first apprentice then a company member, and has served as its Associate Artistic Director since 2004. Cabuag has danced with Camille A. Brown, Mekeda Thomas, in Rock the House (Paramount Pictures), The Shoji Tabuchi Show (Branson, MO), The King and I (Richard Rodgers Centennial Production), and has been seen on TV’s Law & Order: SVU and a Codorniu Cava commercial for Spanish television. He has assisted Brown in creating repertory on Philadanco Dance Company, MUNTU Drum and Dance Company, TU Dance, Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company, and served as associate choreographer for the Tony Award-winning Porgy and Bess. Cabuag is a 2004 New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award winner for EVIDENCE and he received the Dance Teacher Award of Distinction alongside Brown in 2024.

Souleymane “Solo” Badolo is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, performer, and Assistant Professor of Dance at Bard College, celebrated for his innovative fusion of traditional African and contemporary dance vocabularies. Born in Burkina Faso, he founded Kongo Ba Téria in 1993, a troupe that redefines African dance aesthetics. Badolo has worked with Burkina Faso’s Salia ni Seydou, French choreographers Elsa Wolliaston and Mathilde Monnier, and the National Ballet of Burkina Faso. His collaborators include Nora Chipaumire, Ralph Lemon, Reggie Wilson, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Urban Bush Women). His work is featured in the documentary Movement (R)evolution Africa and Film Nora, highlighting his role in Africa’s experimental dance movement. Badolo has been commissioned by Danspace Project, NYLA, Harlem Stage, BAM, Jacob’s Pillow, Adzido Dance Company, Philadanco, and Ballet National of Burkina Faso, among others. His research into African dance traditions is supported by NYLA’s Suitcase Fund and, with Creative Capital, he is developing “the science of ancestors,” a technique with roots in the symbolic sign language of geomancy African divination.

Courtney “Balenciaga” Washington is a visionary Black trans femme choreographer, performer, and the creative director of MasterZ at Work Dance Family. A legend in the ballroom community, Washington is the founder of the Kiki House of Juicy Couture and the leader of the House of Balenciaga. She is recognized for her groundbreaking work in fusing street dance, street jazz, ballroom, and hip-hop, creating performances that are vibrant, high-energy expressions of resilience, survival, and chosen family. As a queer teen in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, she found refuge in dance. Her passion led to the formation of the Pretty Kitties crew, evolving into MasterZ at Work. The company engages with communities in rehearsals in public parks and outreach events, promoting inclusivity and accessibility in underserved neighborhoods. With the support of Works & Process, the company performed at the Guggenheim, SummerStage, Jacob’s Pillow, and Lincoln Center. Washington’s work uplifts the legacy of ballroom and street dance, carving out a place in the broader dance world.

Photo by Justin Chao

Saturday, September 12
1:00 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission
45 minutes
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

EVIDENCE presents Where the Light Shines Through and Torch, two choreographic works full of heart. Both are brilliant and triumphant expressions of freedom for our times performed by Brown’s highly accomplished dancers. Their exacting movements exude grace, and equal parts intensity and generosity. With dancing so infectious and soul-stirring, you will be swept up out of your seat throughout the entire show.

Founded by Ronald K. Brown in 1985 and based in Brooklyn, EVIDENCE focuses on the seamless integration of traditional African dance with contemporary choreography to provide a unique view of human struggles, tragedies, and triumphs. Brown uses movement as a way to reinforce the importance of community in African American culture and to acquaint audiences with the beauty of traditional African forms and rhythms. Brown has set works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, Cleo Parker Robinson Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire, Ko-ThiDance Company, Philadanco and others. He choreographed Regina Taylor’s award-winning play, Crowns and won an AUDELCO Award for his work on that production. EVIDENCE tours to some 25 communities in the United States and abroad. The company has traveled to Cuba, Brazil, England, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa and Canada to perform, teach master classes, and conduct lecture-demonstrations for individuals of all ages.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo by Titus Ogilvie Laing

Saturday, September 12
2:30 PM
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission
60 minutes, includes 10 minute intermission
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

Precise, high-energy dancing mirrors the bustle of a big city, all-night diner and the internal landscape of those who work and gather inside. Moreover, Washington’s choreography is past-present-future synthesized across space and time, pulling from dance forms—house, hip hop, vogue, and street—seamlessly. In ALL INCLUSIVE, Washington’s choreography is past-present-future synthesized across space and time, pulling from dance forms—house, hip hop, vogue, and street—seamlessly. Following, The 24/7 Diner is precise, high-energy dancing that mirrors the bustle of a big city, all-night diner and the internal landscape of those who work and gather inside. For both choreographies, tight, continuously evolving formations serve to amplify each dancer’s individual style, personality, and charm.

Created and directed by Courtney “Balenciaga” Washington—founder of the Kiki House of Juicy Couture, a leader of the House of Balenciaga, and Legend in the Ballroom community, who cut her teeth in street-dance competitions—MasterZ at Work Dance Family is a group of extraordinarily talented individuals that come from all different dance backgrounds, including jazz, hip hop, street jazz, house, African, voguing, and contemporary. Members are highly ranked within the dance competition world and, while company members have their own dance goals and accomplishments, the company performs masterpieces together.

ALL INCLUSIVE and The 24/7 Diner were commissioned by Works & Process. ALL INCLUSIVE was developed in Works & Process residencies at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2021) and Bethany Arts Community (2022). The 24/7 Diner was made possible, in part, by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation. The 24/7 Diner was developed in Works & Process Residencies at Modern Accord Depot (2024), Bethany Arts Community (2025), and The Campus at Marlboro Music (2026).

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo by Marley Trigg Stewart

Saturday, September 12
6:00 PM
$35 General Admission, $25 Student Admission
75 minutes
Mountain Stage (outdoors)

Sadonna (Miguel Gutierrez) and the Slutinos (John Maria Gutierrez, Alvaro Gonzalez, and Santiago Venegas) provide the bow at the end of the festival, the cherry on top of a full season. Fans of Madonna’s sensational pop hits will recognize the messages of strength and resilience in Sadonna’s slower, bluer renditions. Though comfortingly familiar, the now sad songs rightly reveal the raw vulnerability and beating heart behind these classic hits as we sing farewell to summer.

Miguel Gutierrez is a multidisciplinary dance and music artist. Recent work includes Super Nothing, created through the Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist program at NYLA, and Frankenstein, created for visual artist Avram Finkelstein at Smack Mellon. His work has been presented internationally for over 20 years, most recently at ODC/SF, On the Boards, CAP/UCLA, MCA Chicago, American Dance Festival. He was a selected artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Guggenheim Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, and has received a Foundation for Contemporary Art award, Doris Duke Artist Award, Frankie Award, and four New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards. His writing has appeared in BOMB, Small Press Traffic’s The Back Room, InDance, SLUTS anthology from Dopamine Press, and more. His podcast, Are You For Sale? examines the ethical entanglement between dancemaking and funding. His two records—SADONNA: The Album and sueño, featuring his original songs—are available on all streaming platforms. He is an Associate Professor of Choreography in UCLA and splits his time between Los Angeles, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and the world.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.

Photo by Uche Iroegbu, courtesy of Pramila Vasudevan

PERFORMANCE LENDING LIBRARY
QR codes at Studio Complex Lobby and at Concessions
Monday - Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM
Access included with tickets on festival days
Lobby Gallery + Grounds (indoors and outdoors)
Free

A curated selection of audio-guided physical experiences adapted for Kaatsbaan’s environment, each under 30 minutes. 

Bring your smart phone/tablet (data streaming required), earbuds/headphones, and be led into a range of embodied performance practices with your imagination as the site of the artwork. Available onsite for free and at your own pace throughout the festival (August 29–September 12).

At Kaatsbaan, you can find the Performance 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 experience and answer any questions you may have.

• A Concept Album Of Architectural Choreographies: A guerrilla audio tour in semi-public spaces
  Bridget Fiske, Joseph Lau, Stelios Manousakis, and Stephanie Pan, A Concept Album of Architectural Choreographies: A guerrilla audio tour in semi-public spaces. A mixtape-style selection of propositions to perform almost-imperceptible daily dances in overlooked transitory and in-between places around Kaatsbaan. An international co-production by Modulus (NL) and Project Auske (UK).

• Terry Hempfling and Rachel Jendrzejewski: Backwards Walk
  An invitation to walk backwards slowly, in a sustained tempo, while listening to fragments of text and focusing your sensory orientation along a single path. Developed as a collaboration from 2016 to 2025 and adapted in 2026 for Kaatsbaan, Backwards Walk is a site-responsive movement practice designed to interrupt your habitual patterns of perception, attention, and locomotion.

• Plant Lines | Pramila Vasudevan, Moss | Marrow Vitality Scores
  A movement ritual for all bodies as constellations of energy fields. A visualization and overlay of human marma points (ie. anatomical junctions where muscles, veins, ligaments, bones, and joints meet) with those of our plant kin (ie. roots to shoots), honoring every point as vulnerable and an opportunity for healing.
  

About the Artists:

Modulus is a Hague-based artist-run interdisciplinary production house that creates innovative, participatory, immersive, and embodied experiences.

The work of Stelios Manousakis (Modulus) has been shown in five continents in festivals, performance venues, centers, museums, galleries, underground spaces, film houses and public spaces, such as ZKM, Ars Electronica, Rewire Festival, Museum Reina Sofia, London National Gallery, IDFA, The Place, November Music, Dutch National Opera, and O. Festival. Stelios has a PhD in Digital Arts and Experimental Media from the University of Washington.

Stephanie Pan (Modulus) is a voice artist, composer, interdisciplinary maker, and performer. Pan has created and presented work at venues and festivals like CTM Berlin, Rewire Festival, Young Vic Theatre, La MaMa, BBC, Dutch National Opera, Beursschouwburg Brussel, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum Den Haag. She has collaborated with Belarus Free Theatre, filmmaker Jeanette Groenendaal, and Ensemble Klang, among others. 

Project Auske is a Manchester-based choreographic creative house working at the edges of forms, and the co-existence and intersection of ideas and practices.

Bridget Fiske (Project Auske) is a director, choreographer, performer, producer, facilitator, and writer with a 25-year international portfolio in dance, theatre, film, participatory and interdisciplinary arts. Fiske has been choreographic, movement and rehearsal director for Belarus Free Theatre and the documentary Iron Butterflies. Fiske is associate director of Sufi in The City. Other works have been presented at Cinekid Festival, The Place, Lowry, Open Amare, Illuminating York, Liverpool Biennial, and The Future (Rambert & Lowry). 

Joseph Lau (Project Auske) is an artist working in contemporary movement and choreography, with projects often exploring political, social, and economic themes. His work includes the EU-commissioned Viva… and Deeper Than All Roses for the FascinatE multimedia project with BBC, Technicolour and European partners. Lau was the inaugural Moving Dance Forward associate, and choreographed and directed Abandoned Things. Lau has performed with imitating the dog, Opera Queensland, Willi Dorner, Barking Gecko, Buzz Dance Theatre, and Dancenorth Australia. Lau is a founder of Manchester Dance Consortium.

Terry Hempfling’s work spans dance, improvisation, site-specific performance, visual art, video, and social practice, with a particular interest in ephemeral performance, embodied memory, and the ways live experiences are transmitted, documented, archived, and transformed in analog and digital media. She has worked with Phoebe Berglund, Marina Abramović, Laure Prouvost, Pierre Droulers, Ada Friendman, Anthea Hamilton, and Rachel Jendrzejewski, with whom she maintained a decade-long artistic partnership before stewarding Jendrzejewski’s artistic archive following her passing in 2025. In 2026, Hempfling founded The New Workers Dance League in Minneapolis, a public movement project developed in response to Operation Metro Surge. This summer, she presented a video and print work with Queer Arts at Beverley’s, New York City, and video at Pasture Gallery, New Hampshire.

Rachel Jendrzejewski (1982–2025) was an interdisciplinary artist and writer who frequently collaborated with choreographers, musicians, and multimedia artists to explore wide-ranging performative vocabularies. Her work was developed and/or presented by Walker Art Center, Padua Playwrights, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Tricklock Company, Joe’s Pub, The Wild Project, RISD, MASS MoCA, and ICA/Boston, among others. Published texts include MERONYMY (53rd State Press), In Which _______ and Others Discover the End, a collaboration with SuperGroup (Plays Inverse), and encyclopedia (Spout Press). Jendrzejewski was a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye in Minneapolis.

Pramila Vasudevan is a movement-centered artist, cultural worker, and maker of community-rooted/routed transdisciplinary work. She is of Tamil descent and has been living and working in the Twin Cities, on stolen Dakota land, for the past 20-plus years. Vasudevan founded Aniccha Arts (2004–2025), an experimental arts collaborative, producing site-specific performances. She has been honored with McKnight Choreography Fellowship (2024, 2016), Joyce Award (2022), United States Artists (2022), and Guggenheim (2017). Her current practice involves gardening, hosting conversations and community gatherings, and developing improvisational movement inspired by growing practices and plant cycles in the urban wild.

Photo courtesy of artist

LAURA CURRY, CITA EN BICI / BIKE DATE
Book directly with the artist onsite during the festival, August 29–September 12
bikedateproject@gmail.com

From an earnest conversation while biking, choreographer and social practice artist Laura Curry has turned a seemingly simple research process, started in 2013 in South and North American cities, into a sisterhood of mothers, daughters, aunties, grandmas, and fem/trans individuals who are also cyclists. Share stories while on a bike ride with Laura on the Empire State Trail or your local neighborhood route.

Laura Curry is an artist, educator, and researcher focusing on environmental and social justice through a feminist, queer perspective. Her practice includes collaboration, critical pedagogy, installation, media production, activism, performance, and writing. Curry holds an MFA in Media Art Production from SUNY Buffalo, is a published member of the Collective EnJust Network for environmental justice, Kiel Germany, and the American Association of Geographers.

Curry moves across social and political borders, working predominantly in the US and Mexico, where she presents her art, and teaches critical pedagogy at universities and research institutions. Her work has been exhibited at Queens Museum, DOCUMENTA 13, Yes We Cannibal (Baton Rouge), ISEA (Albuquerque), On the Boards and Hugo House (Seattle), PICA’s TBA Festival (Portland), The Southern Theater (Minneapolis), ODC Theater (San Francisco), Bauhaus-Universität (Weimar), and in Mexico at The Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology (Michoacan), and Artes del Tecnológico de Monterrey, NoAutomatico, and LAB Nuevo Leon (Monterrey).