Enthusiastic applause from a sold out crowd closed our second annual LUMBERYARD In The City Festival.

Our audiences were the first in the world to see Latitude, a new performance by Dana Reitz which The New York Times described in its recent review as “remarkable”.

In addition to Reitz’s world premiere, which ran Feb. 8-10, the Festival included a U.S. premiere by Kei Takei as well as a NYC premiere by Robbie McCauley.

About Festival performers: Kei Takei, Robbie McCauley and Dana Reitz

Each drew sizable crowds that included many artists from New York’s dance community who were keen to see performers whose work they had long admired.

Though Kei Takei had been an “established force in New York dance” in the 1980s and 90s, the premiere of Bamboo Forest (Jan. 25-27) marked her first return to the U.S. in 17 years.

Robbie McCauley, who presented Sugar (Feb. 1-3), is an award-winning theatre artist whose autobiographical solo about living with diabetes inspired The Boston Globe to describe her as uniquely capable of acquainting audiences with themselves by sharing herself: “Story by story, observation by observation, McCauley builds a striking rapport with the audience…heads nodding, they hang on her words, as if they had come to hear McCauley talk about their lives as well as hers.”

Our story

Presenting new and never-before-seen works drives to the core of LUMBERYARD’s commitment to connect audiences with world-class performance and the artists who create it.

Our annual In the City Festival allows LUMBERYARD to continue supporting performance during the construction of our new state-of-the art performance and production campus in Catskill, N.Y.

The space is currenntly being transformed into the first residential facility in the U.S. dedicated to providing artists and their companies with the time and technical assistance to finalize their work before premiering.

It’s also being adapted for use in film and television production, an important element in the economic revitalization of Greene County.

In the meantime, Executive and Artistic Director, Adrienne Willis, shared her excitement about LUMBERYARD’s parallel focus, the 2018 In The City Festival lineup:

“LUMBERYARD has had the privilege of showcasing performances by some of the world’s finest artists, across multiple genres,” she said.

“We’re beyond thrilled to continue in that vein this year, by presenting the works of three dynamic women – Kei Takei, Robbie McCauley and Dana Reitz – who have been engaging and challenging audiences for decades with their cutting edge performances.

“We celebrate the careers of these three formidable women artists who have forged creative paths in melding transcultural dance practices; movement, light, and sound; and the personal and the political.”

“At a time when, across fields, women’s critical innovations are being given their due, we are honored to showcase artists like these artists whose contributions to contemporary performance are widespread and innumerable.”

Thank you for your support

We are grateful to LUMBERYARD supporters and look forward to soon sharing with you our summer season lineup.

LUMBERYARD In the City is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

LUMBERYARD In the City is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

LUMBERYARD’s Festival performances are part of New York Live Arts’ Live Arts PLUS program, designed to allow missioned-aligned performing arts organizations access to state-of-the-art facilities.