Perhaps the best measurement of an arts institution’s success isn’t the arts programming that it presents or the size of the audiences it attracts at all. It’s the new artists that the programming inspires; the budding young creatives who are stirred by what they encounter at such a facility—and from there go forth into the world to make more great art, share it with their own audiences, and pass that inspiration on to future generations.
And since its 1990 founding, the 153-acre artist sanctuary known as Kaatsbaan Cultural Park has inspired hundreds of new artists. A delicious example of this is the prodigal return of the Limon Dance Company’s associate artistic director, Logan Frances Kruger, who will return for the 2024 Kaatsbaan Annual Festival.
“I was actually a student at a summer ballet intensive that Limon did at Kaatsbaan in 2006,” explains Kruger, who began studying the work of the company’s founder and namesake, legendary dancer Jose Limon, at age nine, got her BFA from Juilliard, and served as the troupe’s principal dancer before assuming her current position.
“I’m thrilled to be coming back for the festival in September.” The Limon Dance Company’s appearance at the festival is part of “New Works Bill” (September 28-29), a mixed program of dance performances woodshopped at Kaatsbaan that also premieres works from the Boca Tuya and Music from the Sole companies.
The festival begins with a screening of Merce/Misha/More (September 13), a documentary focusing on the friendship and mutual collaboration of dance icons Merce Cunningham and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The series wraps with “Autobiography (v100 and v101)” (October 5-6), a performance by the London-based Company Wayne McGregor that fuses genetic code, AI, and choreography. Although Kaatsbaan was initially established with a focus on dance, its programming has expanded to include other artistic disciplines, and the offerings between the above events well reflect the center’s broad creative net.
Author Francine Prose, whose books include Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man; Reading Like a Writer; and the National Book Award finalist Blue Angel, will read from and converse on her newest work, 1974: A Personal History (September 14). In other media, curator Hilary Greene and artists from Kaatsbaan’s 2024 Visual Arts Exhibition will lead a free guided tour of the works on view at the site’s indoor and outdoor galleries (September 15), while “Listening to Records with Joe Hagan” (September 19) has the Vanity Fair correspondent spinning eclectic and rare records on a super-high-end vacuum-tube stereo system a la the vibe of a Japanese listening cafe. In the live musical realm, Gaia Music Collective will lead a community sing of Pete Seeger-related songs at the property’s Outdoor Meadow Stage (September 20) and Bard College-rooted new music ensemble Contemporaneous will unveil an excerpt from “History of Life,” a work-in-progress that draws on the original music and language of ancient Greece (September 21).
“Kaatsbaan is such a nurturing place for the arts,” says Kruger. “To me, the work that it presents is work that really captures the human experience and touches people in their hearts.”
See the website for a full schedule, performance locations, and ticket prices.
This article appears in September 2024.
