Kaatsbaan Cultural Park announces two brand-new works from the insatiable dancemaker Kayla Farrish (2024 Annual Festival, Limón Dance Company commissioned choreographer) that draw on Black histories, jazz’s reimagination, and magical realism. Tickets to DOCILE and A Beast are $45 for general admission and $20 with a student ID, available here. The performances take place on Saturday, September 20 at 7 PM and Sunday, September 21 at 2 PM.
The performance on Saturday, September 20, will include a post-show artist talk led by fellow festival artist Ayodele Casel. Special combo ticket deal available: see performances by Ayodele Casel and Kayla Farrish with one $40 ticket. Select the performance times you want to attend for each artist in the checkout process.
DOCILE is a study on untaming, a play on light and darkness, inspired by James Baldwin’s seminal questioning Notes of a Native Son as he bridged the decision of finding freedom outside of America’s borders or returning home in the 1960s to commit himself to resistance movements. Turning towards and colliding with a vibration of freedom, this work witnesses a Black woman in a discovery of truth and a journey of release, asking “What transformation and wildness is possible in reclamation and seeing our full humanity?”
A Beast is an intimate and eruptive conversation between two people as they make sense of one another. They hold one another and listen, opening up to greater depth and feeling. Their words and songs spill into flight and physical risk. They uncover their personal power within, unraveling and finding themselves through the confrontation.
Kayla Farrish is a Black American Director merging dance-theater, filmmaking, narrative, and sound score. She captures ranging identity, the mythical dualities of history and present survival, and powerful dreaming lending to liberation. Her commissions include Limón Dance Company, Gibney, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Danspace, Pepatian, Little Island, Harlem Stage, Blacklight Summit, and beyond. Some works formed: Black Bodies Sonata, The New Frontier: My dear America, Sunny Side/Inside the Laughing Barrel, December 8th, Martyr’s Fiction, and others. She creates live works, films, site-specific/immersive, and collaborations. She recently shared Choir (Carrie Mae Weems Exhibition), To Dream A Lifetime (BlackLight), Roster with Melanie Charles, MIXTAPES with Alex MacKinnon and site-specific Broken Record (Little Island) with Brandon Coleman, and Rinsing and Harbor films. Presenting spaces include Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Symphony Space, and National Sawdust, and receiving support from Watermill Center for the Arts, Armstrong Now, Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, Baryshnikov Arts Center, La Mama Experimental Theater, and others. She received the Sundance Uprise Grant for Emerging BIPOC Directors, Bessie Awards for NYLA’s Motherboard Suite and Gibney’s December 8th, NY Times Top 2021 Dance Performances, Roster and Breakout Star. She is a recipient of the Harkness Promise Award for 2022. During 2022, she was a Rehearsal Director for Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, and adjunct faculty for NYU Tisch Dance. During 2023, she created new works for Arizona State University, LINES dance Training Program, University of Arizona. She was commissioned to create a reimagined archival work for Limón Dance Company and collaborated with musician Trixie Whitley for her new music tour. In her next company project, Put Away the Fire, dear, she is touring a group narrative work of radical imagination and liberation, supported by NEFA NDP Touring Dance Production Grant. She is also the 2023 recipient of Watermill Center Nina Von Maltzahn Fellowship and the Ellis Beauregard Foundation Contemporary Dance Award. She is a 2025 CUNY Dance Initiative Artist and NYFA/NYSCA Choreography Fellow.
About Kaatsbaan Cultural Park
The mission of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is to provide an extraordinary environment for cultural innovation and excellence by providing artists at any stage of their careers with creative residencies at state-of-the-art facilities, and presenting audiences and communities with annual festivals, educational programs, and seasonal events. As both an incubator for creativity and presenter for world-class artists in dance, theater, music, film, spoken and written word, and culinary and visual arts, Kaatsbaan provides artists with state-of-the-art dance studios, accommodations, an indoor theater, and outdoor stages. Sited on 153 Hudson River-adjacent acres, Kaatsbaan is free of urban facilities’ space and time constraints, allowing for exciting levels of artistic exploration, creative action, and achievement—just two hours north of New York City.
Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is committed to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts as we aim to present, promote, and embrace programming that accurately reflects our society. We encourage a broadly diverse group of individuals to participate in our programs and join our Board and Staff, and insist on being inclusive of all peoples regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, or physical or mental ability.