In the crush of the overloaded summer season of dance, theater, and music in the Berkshires, I typically find myself too time-pressed to cross state lines and explore the rich performing arts scene in surrounding areas, including neighboring Columbia and Dutchess counties in the Hudson Valley of Upstate New York. There are exceptions; we live quite close to the town of Chatham, and every so often catch a few performances at PS21, which generally presents more experimental work than we find in the Berkshires. SummerScape at Bard College’s Fisher Center often mounts outstanding shows that are well worth the hour-plus drive south to Annandale-on-Hudson, with the added opportunity to join the late-night festivities in the Spiegeltent.
Despite its proximity to Bard, I had never been to Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, a tiny town tucked away on the cliffs of the Hudson River. Not that I was unaware of this organization, which was founded in 1990 as an international center for dance and has been providing creative residencies to artists across multiple disciplines for the past two decades. It has been on my radar for a while, but scheduling conflicts kept me from performances that I would otherwise have attended.
When I saw that Company Wayne McGregor would be at Kaatsbaan in early October, I was determined to be there. McGregor has served as resident choreographer with the Royal Ballet of the United Kingdom since 2006; he’s the first artist from the realm of contemporary dance to hold this position. Among his many honors, McGregor was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011 for Services to Dance, and he was knighted by King Charles this June. When the Royal Ballet made its Jacob’s Pillow debut this summer, the program concluded with the premiere of Four Figures in a Landscape, a dance McGregor choreographed specifically for the Ted Shawn Theater. This striking piece struck a chord; I made a mental note to see more of his work whenever possible, and the possibility presented itself when I saw that Kaatsbaan’s annual festival would culminate in two performances of McGregor’s award-winning 2017 work, Autobiography.
As is the case at Jacob’s Pillow, attending an event at Kaatsbaan is a total sensory experience, from the drive to Tivoli through the brilliant Hudson Valley countryside ablaze with fall foliage to the peaceful beauty of the 153-acre campus, most of which is undeveloped fields and woodlands. From the parking lot, it’s about a ten-minute walk to the outdoor stage; contemporary sculptures dot the landscape here and there along the path. (Anyone not up for the hike can hitch a ride on the golf carts chauffeured by staff and volunteers.) The seasonal stage is nestled in the grass, with a few rows of “premium” seats: basically fold-up camping or beach chairs. Those who haven’t ponied up for the premium seats can rent a chair on site, schlepp their own, or throw down a blanket and be resigned to subpar sight lines — which would be a shame for this dance performance.
On a gorgeous autumn evening, it’s hard to imagine that any performance could compete with the canvas of fall foliage and the Catskill Mountains across the Hudson, but the dancers of Company Wayne McGregor grab attention from the start, and they hold it throughout the 80-minute duration of Autobiography. This piece is different each time it’s performed. (We saw v100 on a Saturday evening, and audiences the next day saw v101.) That’s because the sequence and selection of sections to be presented for any given performance is dictated by an algorithm.
McGregor’s process in creating this work calls to mind the late legendary dancemaker Merce Cunningham, who famously incorporated chance as an integral part of his work, letting a roll of the dice, a flip of a coin, or even the I Ching determine fundamental elements of each performance — including direction, casting, and sequencing. He created his dances independent of music; on any given performance, any piece of music could accompany the dancers, with length of time the only constant. Where Cunningham’s method was grounded in Buddhism, McGregor looks to science — particularly biology and technology — to dictate the sequencing of Autobiography. (This is not to suggest that Cunningham was a luddite. He was an early adopter of technologies such as video, television, and computers in the choreographic process, and later in his career he used body sensors and motion capture software as part of his creative process.)
McGregor created Autobiography in 2017. His website describes the work as “a dance portrait inspired by the sequencing of his own genetic code.” Without getting too technical, the work is drawn from 23 movement sections, reflecting the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome. McGregor based the movements that comprise each section on his life: meaningful memories, music, art, his own writing. The algorithm selects which sections the audience will see in each performance, and in what sequence they will be performed, making the dance a new spin on the term “genetic sequencing.” The segments that start and end the piece remain constant, giving the work a fixed emotional framework. You don’t need to know all this to enjoy the superlative dancing by McGregor’s exceptional company, but it does deepen the experience and resonance of this abstract work.
The work begins as a solo dancer mounts stairs from behind the stage and moves sinuously into balanced extensions, supple backbends, cartwheels, jittery twitches, off-kilter poses, and vigorous floor moves, foreshadowing the dance’s continual transitions from balletic to pedestrian, from graceful to eccentric, from slow and halting to fast and driven, from languorous to choppy, from solos, duets, and trios to full ensemble sections, the movements and floorwork always unexpected yet somehow inevitable. The moods of the segments fluctuate as well, from love and affection to conflict and confrontation, from care and cooperation to competition and grandstanding, from dark and tense to radiant and uplifting, to completely abstract complex patterning.
The dancers’ affect also shifts from segment to segment, from blank-faced remove to warmth or hostility toward fellow dancers and ever so rarely a sly, knowing smile to the audience. Throughout all these shifts, the diverse, individualistic dancers that comprise the company work as a thoroughly cohesive ensemble, perfectly executing choreography that calls on all of their estimable skills: speed, grace, stamina, flexibility, strength, balance, rhythm, timing, proprioception, memory, and intelligence.
The original score, by contemporary electronic musician and composer Jlin, lays the groundwork for the emotional terrain of each segment, shifting from jittery techno to lyrical to all-out EDM, and all points in between, with one section early on featuring repeated fragments of disturbing dialog and screams suggesting violence and mental distress. Beyond Jlin’s work, the score includes music by other artists as diverse as Arcangelo Corelli, Max Richter, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. In one section dancers seem to call out the beats, cueing specific sequences and directional changes.
Costumes designed by Aitor Throup add further emotional resonance to the performance. The dancers begin in loose, gauzy, flowing black and white blouses and capris and make several wardrobe changes throughout the evening, at one point donning black bikini-cut bottoms (plus flesh-toned tops for the women) that make them look naked and vulnerable, in sharp contrast to their fierce and self-assured dancing.
The outdoor stage at Kaatsbaan precluded the striking, dramatic set design, projections, and lighting elements deployed on indoor stages; while it may seem a bit bare bones in comparison, the pastoral setting of the Mountain Stage created yet another iteration of the dance, softening the harder edges. The sun setting behind the stage put the dancers in silhouette for extended periods, obscuring their expressions and flattening some of the performance, and the angle of light at times prompted a few audience members to change their seats in hopes of escaping the sun’s blinding rays. The setting also added surprise elements — including an overhead flock of geese honking as they headed south for the season and a few passing trains — that, while incidental, added their own resonance, as well as making each performance even more singular, beyond the algorithmic dictates of sequencing.
I would like to revisit this work, on an indoor stage, to see it with the design and lighting elements, and to see what a difference the algorithm’s sequencing would make. Still, the missing design elements appear ornate, and this staging allowed viewers to concentrate on the exceptional dancers performing the intricate, demanding choreography. Thanks to the spectacular natural backdrop, nothing about this performance felt stripped down, nor did it seem as if anything was lacking; indeed, the top-notch dancing, smart choreography, and sublime setting made for a fulfilling cultural outing, and I look forward to returning to Kaatsbaan for the 2025 annual festival.
Learn more about Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, New York, in the Hudson Valley.
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