The Petronio Residency Center (PRC) addresses the shifting field of American dance by offering on-site creative residencies nestled within a 175-acre haven perched in Greene County’s Catskill Mountains. Residencies allow artists time for creation, discussion, and critical thinking, free from the mandates and responsibilities of daily life and any specific deliverables. This period of research outside of the traditional structure and timeline of art-making is crucial to developing work of surprise and depth, making PRC an important leader in a national residency network of like-minded partner programs. PRC also serves as a gathering place for the local community, affording opportunities for artists to interact with the specific place, and for the local residents to be invited in. The site of the Petronio Residency Center can provide a nurturing retreat for many–a place that provokes the creative process.
As diminishing delivery systems and other economic constraints affect the research, development, and performance of this singularly fragile form, I feel called upon as a mature artist to respond. The need for precious research and development opportunities centered upon the field of the moving arts in America is urgently needed as the financial structures that support this activity disappear before our very eyes.
— STEPHEN PETRONIO
This residency has been way beyond my expectations. It’s remarkably quiet here. It’s amazing.
— RALPH LEMON
The uniqueness of a residency experience takes a working process to a whole other level.
— WENDY WHELAN
It is where it all started for us. It gave us the groundwork for the next step and what this project will be. It’s so important to have this time unpressured.
— SARA MEARNS
RESIDENCIES IN THE AGE OF COVID
Responding to an overwhelming need by dance artists during the COVID pandemic, PRC has sought new ways to provide the time, space and resources for dance artists. In 2021, the Center provided more residencies than ever before through a combination of awarded residencies, subsidized partner residencies, and rentals. PRC closely monitors the COVID-19 situation and continues to update guidelines that consider the health and well-being of the residents, staff and our community. We are grateful to be open and to be welcoming members of our performance community throughout this time.
For more information please contact admin@petron.io.
RECENT UPDATES
In 2021, PRC hosted more artist residencies than ever before, welcoming more than 80 artists to the Center. In April 2022, PRC will host two residencies: RETREAT & RESTORE with Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell, and a partnership residency with Danspace Project for artist Jordan Lloyd. Subsidized Community Partnership Residencies are for artists and presenters in need of development and rehearsal space for projects with resources and production dates committed but who lack needed physical space and time to create the work. The aim is to bolster support for dance artists and work together to create fluid, well-resourced pathways toward production and presentation. This is a vital component of the vision for PRC, and the success of the third year of the Subsidized Residencies is evidence of the impact and demand for this resource in the dance field.
RESIDENT ARTIST HISTORY
PETRONIO AWARD
Established in 2017, the Petronio Award celebrates the creative process, providing recipients and their collaborators time and resources for discussion, critical thinking, and creation without the expectation of formal deliverables. Artists receive complete use of the facilities, including the state of the art studio and grounds, a lead artist and travel stipend, and chef-prepared meals. National dance leaders and artists choose awardees through a nomination and panel process.
NIA LOVE
FEBRUARY 2023
nia love is a Black American woman, dancer, choreographer, diver, and mother, whose practice is anchored and immersed in maternal care, alchemy of blackness, embodied memory, and “curiosity with the sea.” Her approach is unruly and elegiac as she searches for wild, rowdy, and disobedient movement, wringing out the body of all its expressive capacities and building up something else: new scores of space and alternate routes of escape and feeling.
RETREAT & RESTORE
Residency Opportunities for NYC Dance Artists
PRC is thrilled to continue RETREAT & RESTORE in 2023! Created in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, PRC has awarded Malcolm-x Betts with a residency this season, acknowledging both the needs of NYC artists, as well as a deeper commitment to BIPOC and LGBTQ artists.
Awarded artists and up to five other collaborators receive a one week long residency at Petronio Residency Center in Round Top, N.Y. PRC provides full room and board, with a chef prepared lunch and dinner, $1,000 stipend to lead artist, $500 travel stipend, and unlimited use of house and studio for a one week period, allowing unfettered time to artists and their collaborators.
Retreat and Restore at the Petronio Residency Center is a practice in receiving abundance; an invitation to rest, recover, and nourish; and an offering to let that be enough…
— NORA ALAMI
I felt fully free to be and let the process unfold which felt like a deeply healthful and (ironically) productive way to move.
— ALICIA BAUMAN MORALES
MALCOLM-X BETTS
MAY 2023
Malcolm-x Betts is a New York based visual and dance artist who believes that art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His artistic work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. He has a community engagement practice allowing artistic freedom and making art accessible to everyone.
partnership residency program
PRC has also created a Partnership Residency Program, initiated to bring together two or more presenters/producers to pool resources in support of artist residencies, expanding the opportunities for artists to create work upstate. These artists will also enjoy lodging, meals, and necessary space to conduct their research for one week.
GILLIAN WALSH
June 2023
Gillian Walsh is an artist and performer from Brooklyn, NY. Her work Moon Fate Sin (2017) was presented in the St. Mark’s Church sanctuary by Danspace Project & Performa. The work explored the death drive and transcendence in dance and the turn toward mysticism in times of global crisis. Working with dance as a site of psychospiritual friction, Walsh produces long, meditative, highly formal choreographies. Though her works can be forbidding in their use of duration, stillness, emptiness, and repetition, they offer a sincere invitation to experience dance, time, and being together in new ways.
Stephen Petronio Company recognizes Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and SHS Foundation as lead supporters of the Petronio Residency Center.
Stephen Petronio Company’s Petronio Residency Center FY23 program, including the Petronio Residency Award and Retreat and Restore Award, is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with additional support from the Joseph & Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, Serena Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and from a generous donation by our esteemed patron Nina Matis.
It is with gratitude and humility that SPC acknowledges that the Petronio Residency Center and its associated artists work, perform and gather on the ancestral homelands of the Muh he con ne ok people, who are the Indigenous peoples of the land where PRC is located. SPC honors and respects their ancestors past and present as the organization commits to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all. Despite tremendous hardship in being forced from here, today their community resides in Wisconsin, and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all.
The violence directed towards Indigenous, Native, Aboriginal, First Nation, and First Peoples is ongoing and exemplified when Indigenous people’s histories are erased, their cultures are trivialized, their resources are seized, their labor is exploited, their children are stolen, and their lives are taken. In order to fight against this violence, occupiers of this land must listen to and amplify Indigenous people’s voices, while fighting against their complicity.
We recognize that land acknowledgements are a small step towards ensuring a culture of respect, truth, and accountability in our community: we acknowledge the truth of violence perpetrated in the name of this country and we make a commitment to uncovering that truth.