Kaatsbaan Cultural Park Announces Spring Festival 2021

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park will present an outdoor Spring Festival in May 2021 across its 153-acres in the Hudson Valley. The multi-disciplinary festival will feature dance performances and music concerts, as well as panel discussions with world-renowned culinary artists and poets.

"This inaugural Spring Festival continues the celebration and support of our local and artistic communities that began with Summer Festival 2020, and is a massive programmatic expansion, as our organization continues to develop and realize its potential for fully becoming a Cultural Park for the Hudson Valley," said Sonja Kostich, Executive Director

"Kaatsbaan's outdoor stages in the sweeping fields will ensure a high level of safety during this COVID era and they will continue to serve as a beautiful performance venue in the times beyond. Kaatsbaan is committed to providing opportunities for artists to practice their craft and for audiences to enjoy live art," said Stella Abrera, Artistic Director

Highlights of the Spring Festival include:

America's leading dance companies American Ballet Theatre and Mark Morris Dance Group, as well as featured dancers Yannick Lebrun from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Maria Kowroski, Ask la Cour, and Gonzalo Garcia who are celebrating their final season with New York City Ballet, will present signature pieces and newly commissioned works.

Pianist Hunter Noack will bring his acclaimed IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild™ series, co-curated by Garen Scribner, to Kaatsbaan. With the support of a Howard Gilman Foundation grant, we are proud to be commissioning new works for this outdoor concert series, with a focus on indigenous artists, with dances created during a Kaatsbaan 2021 residency.

Oliver Ray, former guitarist and singer/songwriter for Punk Poet Laureate Patti Smith, will curate an inaugural music & poetry program.

Jeff Gordinier, the food & drinks editor of Esquire and author of Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, is leading Kaatsbaan's new focus on the culinary arts. Gordinier will curate and moderate two roundtables: one on the booming culinary scene in the Hudson Valley, dubbed "the next Napa Valley" by Esquire, and another on the nourishing, fascinating, and once-again fashionable practice of foraging for wild edibles. In both discussions Gordinier, who is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, will speak with superstars from the food world about how our growing obsession with what we eat is changing the culture in which we live. Joining him on the Hudson Valley panel are two chefs whose acclaimed restaurants recently appeared in Esquire's "Best New Restaurants 2020" list - Dale Talde of Goosefeather in Tarrytown and Gabe McMackin of Troutbeck in Amenia - as well as Hudson Valley farmer and good-meat advocate Celine Kagan. Joining Gordinier on the foraging panel will be poets and foragers Maria Pinto and J. Mae Barizo, as well as New York-based chef Will Horowitz, co-author of Salt Smoke Time: Homesteading and Heritage Techniques for the Modern Kitchen.

Additional program information will be made available online at www.kaatsbaan.org. Ticket availability and additional artists will be announced in early 2021. Kaatsbaan Spring Festival 2021 will be made available via digital platforms for those who cannot attend the live performances.

All events and performances of the Spring Festival will take place outside across the 153-acres of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and will follow all CDC and NYS guidelines. Proper safety protocols will be in place, similar to ones followed during Kaatsbaan Summer Festival 2020, which yielded zero reports of COVID-19. These protocols include mandatory masks, socially-distanced seating, health surveys, temperature checks, timed arrivals, and one-direction foot traffic.

The Spring Festival 2021 springboards off the overwhelming success of Summer Festival 2020, which supported over 100 New York City artists and gave 1,800 audience members an opportunity to attend safe, live performances outdoors over the course of nine weeks. With the reality of the economic challenges for many during Covid-19, all 17 performances were free with a request for donations. Kaatsbaan was able to donate 25% of performance donations to NAACP, LeBron James' More Than a Vote and MOVE|NYC, a New York City based arts and social justice organization. Summer Festival 2020 was a direct response to both the violence inflicted upon the global Black community and to the needs of the many unemployed artists. It also provided a means for local economic recovery.

Photo credit: Quinn Wharton