A Week of Performance Art Inspired by Winter
PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance hosts The Dark, a multimedia performance art festival across five towns in New York’s Columbia County
One might typically associate the long, cold winter of New York’s Hudson Valley with snow sports or hunkering down by the fireplace with a local brew. This year, why not embrace it in a new way? For seven days starting 16 February, PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance is hosting The Dark, a multimedia performance art festival spanning across Columbia County. Expect memorable music, dance, theater, installations and more, all specifically curated around the theme of darkness.
Vallejo Ganter, PS21’s Artistic and Executive Director, wanted to celebrate winter and create a special event for the community in these dark times. “We all know that summertime upstate is glorious—and jammed full of events,” he says. “For those who live there, the winter is far more challenging. We’re embracing the winter and the darkness, creating work designed for just those conditions. [The Dark] became an enormously exciting thematic to work with for different shows and artists. The existential questions raised by much of the work has also sadly come to reflect the questions we are all asking in the US right now of who we are, and why.”
Over his 25-plus-year career in the arts, Ganter has curated a variety of works for festivals and iconic institutions, but The Dark, which took the team a full 8 months to plan, has proven to be a very different kind of event. Some performances will take place in theaters, while others are set in less traditional spaces like libraries, restaurants, hotels and even an ice skating rink. And winter logistics are never easy to manage.
“I’ve worked on a lot of projects with crazy variables,” he says, ”but never something where we are constantly talking about blizzard plans, buying dozens of sets of ice cleats, sweating plow schedules or planning audience journeys across five towns as we are here.” Consider us intrigued.
The week will feature performances by over 60 international artists, showcasing their works in venues across Hudson, Chatham, Ghent, Kinderhook and Spencertown. This is not your traditional programming, though. “Everyday we can challenge and thrill your wit, heart and intellect from noon till 10 pm with a cascade of experience,” Ganter says. “I’m excited about the shows obviously, but what I’m really hoping is that people truly dive in—for the week or just a day. So much of the work is immersive, but the experience of being there” is an essential part of what makes these artworks so impactful.
With PS21’s own Matthew Gold, Director of Music Programs, curating the sonic journey of day one, the week promises to surprise and delight, inspire and engage, and leave art lovers with a newfound respect for the word “dark.” Expect unique works in creative venues, like Kara-Lis Coverdale’s live pipe organ performance in a church or sound installations in the on-site saunas, ice skating with LaJuné McMillian and John Fitzgerald’s video installation on the 100-acre PS21 grounds, to name a few.
Notably, a few world premieres will also take place at the festival: Paul Kline’s free and family-friendly moving sound sculpture uses the space and audience participation to create a unique composition, while Julian Brave NoiseCat will perform a theatrical and personal reinterpretation of the traditional indigenous “Coyote Story” in four parts.
Whether you opt for a festival pass for the week or prefer a world-class individual performance (click “more info” under each description), PS21 and its partner venues invite you to experience the dark in a new light, with an open mind. “This is what organizations like us should and need to be doing—creating moments for the community around them that simply can’t happen otherwise,” Ganter says. “This is why the arts exist: to bring us together in dialogue, debate and communion, in ways that we didn’t know were possible.”
PS21‘s The Dark runs Monday, 16 February to Sunday, 22 February, 2026.
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