Kaatsbaan Cultural Park to Open 2026 Annual Festival
The Hudson Valley venue prepares to kick off its next slate of dance and performance programming.
For three Saturdays in a row, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park will present the 2026 Annual Festival at 120 Broadway, Tivoli, NY 12583. The festival begins on August 29, 2026, and continues on September 5 and September 12. Each Saturday will feature a distinct lineup and focus.
The festival opener is an all-day celebration filled with live music and geared towards all ages. Dance performances include Calpulli Danza Mexicana, Ballez, and Anna Sperber, and an evening concert by Valerie June. Food available for purchase on site by Hudson Valley vendors.
The 2026 Annual Festival also marks the return of Kaatsbaan’s outdoor Mountain Stage with its expansive views of the Catskill Mountains and immersion in the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley. Most performances are an hour or less, are all ages, and the festival schedule permits an easeful and day-long schedule of art and nature alongside Tivoli’s walkable downtown amenities. Tickets will be offered on an incentive-based, affordable structure.
Annual Festival | Saturday, August 29
11am Kaatsbaan Campus (free): Various artmaking activities and workshops led by festival artists and partners, include a Bike Maintenance Workshop with Laura Curry, Wampum Belt Artmaking with Vickie Ramirez, Ty Defoe, and Jeanette Harrison, and Lacrosse Stick Handling Clinic with Bard College Women’s Lacrosse team.
1pm Mountain Stage (outdoors): Calpulli Danza Mexicana, Native Mexico: Dances of the First Peoples. 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, Purepecha, Zapotec, Totonaca, Maya, Olmec, and Tolteca, and their dances.
3pm Black Box Theater (indoors): Ballez, Travesty Doll Play (after Coppélia). 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 transform and thrive in our relations with one another. Live original score by Lavinia Eloise Bruce and Scott Killian.
5pm Mountain Field (outdoors): Anna Sperber, Bow Echo. 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. Choreographer and performer Anna Sperber is a 2026–2027 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
7pm Mountain Stage (outdoors): Valerie June, Concert. 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).
Michèle Steinwald will return after her first festival in 2025. This year, Steinwald’s curatorial selection brings together multidisciplinary expressions of storytelling, community, and joy.
In Steinwald’s words, “The 2026 festival program reflects what I learned during my time in Tivoli last year. Kaatsbaan audiences and local artists influenced the direction of the festival in how we are centering communities and first-person narratives. Each Saturday of the festival is a mini festival of its own flavor with multiple shows that build into an all-day celebration. Our goal is to create an inviting and uniquely Kaatsbaan experience for everyone to enjoy.
“I am particularly moved that we are able to pay homage to the legacy and power of collective organizing and creative expression rooted in Minnesota by including works by choreographer Pramila Vasudevan, playwright Rachel Jendrzejewski (1982–2025), and a work originally choreographed for TU Dance directed by the iconic and influential Toni Pierce-Sands (1962–2025). With the recent passing of Rachel and Toni, this moment to be with their life’s work is even more meaningful.”
Kaatsbaan’s Managing Director, Naomi Miller, offers that “Kaatsbaan’s signature festival, which first gathered artists and audiences during the pandemic for collective healing, continues to grow and offer new ways to come together in creativity and celebration. Working with Michèle has expanded the scope of artists we present, to everyone’s benefit. Come for distinct moments of joy and transformation, stay for the power of community.”
Performance Lending Library
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. Do at your own pace in and around Kaatsbaan:
- Bridget Fiske, Joseph Lau, Stelios Manousakis, and Stephanie Pan, A Concept Album of Architectural Choreographies: A guerrilla audio tour in semi-public spaces
- Terry Hempfling and Rachel Jendrzejewski, Backwards Walk
- GUTSOIL ARTS | Pramila Vasudevan, Mossing | Marrowing Vitality Scores
Laura Curry, Cita en Bici / Bike Date. 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. Book directly with the artist onsite during the festival or at BikeDateProject@gmail.com.
2026 Visual Arts Exhibition, Earthly Delights. 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. Artists include Laura Battle, Thea Berman, Sharon Broit, Gaston Lachaise, Ian McMahon, Virginia L. Montgomery, Portia Munson, Kris Perry, Aurora Robson, and Nadia Yaron. The exhibition is curated by Hilary Greene.
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. Calpulli Danza Mexicana’s performance and all of Kaatsbaan’s programs are 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.
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Forget I Said Anything Theatre Row (7/17-8/08) |
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A Tom Lehrer Cabaret The Green Room 42 (7/29-7/29) |
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Broadway Magic Hour Broadway Magic Hour: Magic Show (7/25-1/02) |
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Broadway Takes On The 80s The Cutting Room (9/14-9/14) |
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Fool for Love Vino Theater (8/06-8/08) |
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Oil & Whiskey The Bitter End, Laurie Beechman, Prohibition, The Rat NYC (7/15-8/12) |
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Rock Never Dies Hard Rock Cafe (5/29-8/30) |
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That Math Show Theater555 (6/11-8/16) |
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Buxtehude's 'Membra Jesu Nostri' Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (2/13-2/13) |
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MJ – The Musical Neil Simon Theatre (9/05-9/05) |