Petronio Residency Center Announces Record-Breaking Residencies

The Petronio Residency Center (PRC) is pleased to announce its dynamic roster of 2021 artist residencies and awards as well as 2022 plans for more support to artists. In 2021, PRC hosted more artist residencies than ever before, welcoming more than 80 artists to the Center, and will open applications for additional residency opportunities through its RETREAT & RESTORE program on December 7, 2021 for two March 2022 residencies. Alongside its residency program, the Petronio Awards continue, with Jerron Herman named as the 2021 recipient. In 2022, two Petronio Awards will be given, and the two 2022 recipients will be announced in March 2022. PRC was also awarded a $500,000 gift from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) to conserve a 77-acre parcel of land surrounding PRC, and adjacent to the Catskill Preserve, designating it as a forever wild open space now named the Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top, Greene County. This incredible support from DDCF allows the residency, award, and education programs presented at PRC to continue to grow and flourish. http://petron.io/

Petronio Award

PRC announced Jerron Herman as the 2021 Petronio Award. This nomination-only national award was conceived by Stephen Petronio, founder of Stephen Petronio Company. In 2021, artists were nominated by a national panel of nine. The selection committee considered movement-based artists, including those primed for the "next step" in their development; artists with a desire to explore cross-disciplinary collaboration; seasoned artists for whom continued support is important; as well as BIPOC artists whose voices are necessary to uplift.

2021 award winner Jerron Herman and his colleagues Joselia Hughes, Candace Feldman, and Carolyn Lazard will engage in movement sketches for several projects, including a world premiere in May 2022 at Abrons Art Center. The residency at PRC was critical for completing this work. In addition to studio-based work, the group shared that they conjured Black joy in the mountains, repaired a critical view of making work, and experienced a deep healing. 

Residencies

PRC addresses the shifting field of American dance by offering on-site creative residencies nestled within its 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 provides a nurturing retreat for many–a place that provokes the creative process.

During the 2020-21 Season, PRC introduced RETREAT & RESTORE. These residencies provided an acknowledgement of both the needs of NYC artists during COVID-19, as well as a deeper commitment to BIPOC and LGBTQ artists. With assistance from the Howard Gilman Foundation and Mertz-Gilmore, PRC was able to provide residencies to an important group of dance artists, including Alicia Bauman-Morales, Cheri Stokes, Dean Moss, Maria Bauman and Nora Alami. 

PRC also provided residencies to Tendayi Kuumba and Greg Purnell in partnership with NYC's Danspace Project, Jamar Roberts, and the creative collaboration for 7 DEADLY SINS (Joshua Bergasse, Justin Vivian Bond, Jeffrey Guimond, Marc Happel and Sara Mearns) through a partnership with Works & Process. In November 2021, PRC welcomed Will Rawls and company in an inaugural residency partnership with the Maggie Alesee Center for Choreography (MANNC). 

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. 

All selected artists for both the Petronio Award and the RETREAT & RESTORE residencies receive room and board; chef-prepared, locally sourced meals; spacious accommodations for the awardee artist and collaborators in a 6,500 square foot modern house; an artist stipend and travel support; 24-hour access to a 2,500 square foot studio; and exclusive access to the entire 172-acre property, including the Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top Greene County.

Education

PRC provides an exciting dance education program directed by Marcus McGregor both in Greene County, NY public schools and through its on-site annual summer intensive. The 2021 week-long program introduced young people to world culture through dance and featured instructors Elena Mosley, Alicia Bauman-Morales, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, and Sujatha Narthanalaya.

Additional Support

In addition to longtime funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, support for programs and operations of the Petronio Residency Center comes from a variety of contributed sources including the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Serena Foundation, the SHS Foundation, Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation, the Greene County Council of the Arts, and the Bank of Greene County, as well as many generous individual donors. 

Stephen Petronio Company was founded in 1984 to support the creative work of modern dance choreographer Stephen Petronio. The incredible milestone of the 25th anniversary of the Company in 2009 inspired Stephen to explore how SPC could expand from a single-choreographer model dance company to also incorporate and honor the past, present, and future in the field of dance through new initiatives (residency programs and re-staging of important postmodern works). In 2014 the Bloodlines initiative, which preserves a legacy of postmodern dance through restaging projects, was launched, and in 2017, the Petronio Residency Center (PRC) opened. The Company's mission expanded to include the creation and presentation of Petronio's works alongside legacy initiatives meant to secure the history and future of postmodern dance lineage: 1) Stephen Petronio continues to develop and present original choreography; 2) through the Bloodlines initiative, SPC has restaged and presented 12 postmodern dance projects, and commissioned two new solo works from young choreographers to date; and 3) PRC, located in the Hudson Valley, supports future choreographic invention in the field with artistic residencies as well as education initiatives. For over 35 years, Stephen Petronio has honed a unique language of movement that speaks to the intuitive and complex possibilities of the body informed by its shifting cultural context. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines over his career and holds the integration of multiple forms as fundamental to his creative drive and vision. He continues to create a haven for dancers with a keen interest in the history of contemporary movement and an appetite for the unknown. Petronio was born in Newark, New Jersey, and received a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began his early training in improvisation and dance technique. He was greatly influenced by working with Steve Paxton and was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979 to 1986). He has gone on to build a unique career, receiving numerous accolades, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, an American Choreographer Award, a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award, and a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Petronio has created over 40 works for his company and has been commissioned by some of the world's most prestigious modern and ballet companies, including William Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt (1987), Deutsche Oper Berlin (1992), Lyon Opera Ballet (1994), Maggio Danza Florence (1996), Sydney Dance Company (2003, full evening), Norrdans (2006), the Washington Ballet (2007), The Scottish Ballet (2007), and two works for National Dance Company Wales (2010 and 2013). Over his career, Petronio has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines. Collaborators include some of the most talented and provocative artists in the world: composers Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Peter Gordon; visual artists Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Donald Baechler, and Janine Antoni; fashion designers Narciso Rodriguez, John Bartlett, Benjamin Cho, and Leigh Bowery. Petronio, whose training originated with leading figures of the Judson era, performed Man Walking Down the Side of a Building in 2010 for Trisha Brown Company at the Whitney Museum, and performed his 2012 rendition of Steve Paxton's Intravenous Lecture (1970) in New York, Portland, and at the TEDMED-2012 conference at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, DC. Petronio received the distinction of being named the first Artist-in-Residence at The Joyce Theater from 2012 to 2014. He has been entangled with visual artist Janine Antoni in a number of discipline-blurring projects, including the video installation Honey Baby (2013), created in collaboration with composer Tom Laurie and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, and most recently Ally, in collaboration with Anna Halprin and Adrian Heathfield, which premiered at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in summer of 2016. Petronio and Antoni were the 2017 McCormack Artists in Residence at Skidmore college, where they showed their series of installations, Entangle. Most recently, he was commissioned by The Juilliard School to set a work, #PrayerForNow, on their fourth year students for the New Dances Edition 2019. Petronio's memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, is available at Amazon.com. His latest limited edition book, In Absentia, features entries from his personal journals written in quarantine at the Petronio Residency Center, paired with never before seen studio and behind-the-scenes photos by Sarah Silver and Grant Friedman. For more information, visit http://petron.io.