The Stephen Petronio Company is about to officially enter middle age, and the 40th-anniversary celebrations for the contemporary troupe—including a world premiere at NYU Skirball this month—will come alongside some major organizational changes. Most significant among them: the likely closure of the idyllic Petronio Residency Center, located a few hours north of New York City amongst the Catskill Mountains and designed as an early-stage choreographic development center for dance artists.

This summer, the Petronio Residency Center at Crow’s Nest welcomes its first three artists in residence: Nora Chipaumire, Will Rawls and Kathy Westwater. The center, located in the Catskill Mountains, about two and a half hours north of New York City, is idyllic: The 2,500-square-foot studio has radiant floor-heat and a sprung floor, and the […]

Stephen Petronio brings a bracing season to New York City’s Joyce Theater, where he has performed almost every year for 24 years. His work is exciting to the subscription audience as well as to many dance artists. He delves into movement invention at the same time as creating complex postmodern forms. The new work, Hardness […]

For the past 3 years, choreographer Stephen Petronio has been reviving groundbreaking works of postmodern dance through his BLOODLINES project. This season, although his company will be performing a work by Merce Cunningham, his own choreography moves in a more luxurious direction. We stepped into the studio with Petronio and his dancers where they were […]

Dancers love Kickstarter. Over the past eight years, more than 2,300 dance projects have brought in more than $12 million through campaigns on the site. Even traditional companies like Martha Graham Dance Company and MacArthur “genius” award-winning choreographers like Michelle Dorrance have gotten in on the action. But starting today, the site is announcing a […]

The Radical Bodies evening broke all attendance records at Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse on May 31. People were lining up in the courtyard almost two hours before curtain, and the mood was festive. All 650 seats were filled, more than 100 people were turned away and about 60 went across the street to watch the […]

Joshua Tuason and Melissa Toogood in Petronio’s Locomotor / Non Locomotor. Photo by Yi-Chun Wu, Courtesy Stephen Petronio Company. Stephen Petronio’s residency program Stephen Petronio Company spent much of 2015 looking back, performing works by Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. Now, it’s looking forward. Petronio is creating a residency for choreographers in Pawling, New York, […]

Commissioning work from a composer Choreographers often think of their tools as space, time, shape and motion. But as choreographer Stephen Petronio puts it, music rules: “You can shut your eyes, but you have to put your fingers in your ears to stop listening.” He regularly commissions composers whose work he admires—like Laurie Anderson and […]