Monday, July 19, Staten Island, NY— Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden is excited to present Untitled Solo PARK Cycle 2 by Kathy Westwater as part of the 2021 PASS (Performing Arts Salon Saturdays) series. The performance will take place on Saturday, August 7 from 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor, in the Building G galleries.
“We are thrilled to bring PASS back to our community,” said Melissa West, Snug Harbor’s Vice President of Curation, Performing & Visual Arts. “This residency program fosters the artistry and discourse of artists working across the performing arts. Kathy Westwater’s work is particularly resonant as a meditation on the climate emergency and the ongoing evolution of Fresh Kills from a landfill into a park. These are important histories to consider through the body, and Westwater does this in a visceral way.”
The former Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, NY is undergoing a 30-year transformation from one of the largest environmental traumas in the world into Freshkills Park. The first cycle of PARK occurred during a four-year span from 2009-13. PARK Cycle 2 will take place in 2021-23, coinciding with the first opening of parkland on the landfill.
The project engages frontline communities who bear the burden of our industrial waste complex and choreographically reveals the underbelly of our material world. Lead project partners include the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees Fresh Kills Park with NYC Department of Sanitation, Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, and Gibney Dance in Manhattan.
From March 22 – April 30, 2021, Westwater was in residence at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor with support from the CUNY Dance Initiative undertaking research and development of the second cycle of the PARK project. Untitled Solo PARK Cycle 2, choreographed and performed by Kathy Westwater, was created while in residence at the Newhouse Center.
Kathy Westwater, “an unconventional choreographer experiencing a surge of recognition” (The New Yorker), has pursued radical dance forms since 1996. Described as “at the limits of the human” (The Brooklyn Rail), her work is founded in an experiential approach to physical invention. It responds to the societal landscape in which it manifests, taking up our most challenging experiences such as pain – including the pain of others – like with the Bessie-nominated Rambler, Worlds Worlds A Part (2019). Westwater’s major works have explored the built environments of monuments (Anywhere, 2016) and landfills and parks (PARK, 2009-2013); war and pain (Macho, 2008); intersections of human and animal culture (twisted, tack, broken, 2005); psycho-physical states of fear (Dark Matter, 2002); and interactive virtual environments (The Fortune Cookie Dance, 1999). The Fortune Cookie Dance is cited as one of the earliest interactive virtual dances. Westwater is the first female recipient of Lumberyard’s Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography. She was an inaugural artist-in-residence at Petronio Residency Center in 2018, and an artist-in-residence at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in 2019. Westwater has received commissions from Lumberyard, Temple University, Dance Theater Workshop, and Danspace Project. From 2000-2019 she taught at Sarah Lawrence College where she received an MFA.
The PASS: Performing Arts Salon Saturdays residency program is made possible through generous lead support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, with additional support from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Snug Harbor is a proud partner with the CUNY Dance Initiative.
The CUNY Dance Initiative receives major support from the Howard Gilman Foundation and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Additional support is provided by the SHS Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. CDI is part of Dance/NYC’s New York City Dance Rehearsal Space Subsidy Program, made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
ABOUT PASS (PERFORMING ARTS SALON SATURDAYS)
PASS is a performing artist residency focused on the creation and development of original works of performing arts: dance, music, theatre, multi-disciplinary. Snug Harbor offers six residencies per year, five of which are selected through an open call process. Artists live (and sometimes work) in one of Snug Harbor’s historic cottages, with studio space available at the Dance Center for the creation, development and performance of new work. At the end of each residency, artists share their work in public work-in-progress performances across the campus. PASS provides time, space, an honorarium, and curatorial support to incubate artists in the development of their work.
ABOUT SNUG HARBOR CULTURAL CENTER & BOTANICAL GARDEN
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden offers dynamic programming in the arts, horticulture, and agriculture for diverse communities and all ages, on our historic 83-acre campus. We envision being a locally impactful, globally renowned destination, true to our values of artistic vibrancy and community, inclusion and discovery, stewardship and conservation.
Snug Harbor is the result of more than four decades of restoration and development to convert a 19th-century charitable rest home for sailors into a regional arts center, botanical gardens and public park. One of the largest ongoing adaptive reuse projects in America, Snug Harbor encompasses 26 historic structures, 14 botanical gardens, a 2.5-acre urban farm, wetlands, forests and park land on a free, open campus. Snug Harbor is a proud Smithsonian Affiliate organization. Learn more at snug-harbor.org.
