Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and New York Theatre Ballet announced today that they will present a preview of new work, featuring Kevin Iega Jeff’s Letters to My Father: Final Chapter; All the Flowers Are Behind Us by Julian Donahue; and Merce Cunningham’s How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run, on Thursday, October 16 at 6:00 PM. Kaatsbaan’s intimate Black Box theater provides an up-close experience of the creative process as New York Theatre Ballet closes out their residency at Kaatsbaan and prepares for their New York City premieres. Tickets are free and can be reserved here.

New York Theatre Ballet opens its 2025-26 Season at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park with a creative residency culminating in an intimate preview of two visionary new works and a timeless masterpiece. Audiences will get a first look at these works ahead of their New York City premiere in the Spring of 2026.

Featured Works

Letters to My Father: Final Chapter

Choreographer Kevin Iega Jeff, in collaboration with Darryl J. Hoffman (composer), adds his vision to the Letters to My Father series in its final iteration. This poignant exploration examines the complex, often challenging relationship between male-presenting choreographers, composers, and their fathers. It’s a deeply emotional and thought-provoking work that promises to be both powerful and moving.

All the Flowers Are Behind Us

Set to the evocative score Piano 2 by Julius Eastman, Julian Donahue presents his new work, All the Flowers Are Behind Us. This piece delves into the uncertainty of our shared future, contrasting the organic beauty of nature with the starkness of artificiality. It’s a work that speaks to the tensions we face in a rapidly changing world.

How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run

A revival of Merce Cunningham’s iconic 1965 work How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run, brings Cunningham’s experimental movement and the groundbreaking use of stories from John Cage’s 1958 lecture Indeterminacy back to the stage. How to… is a lively and playfully athletic piece with two readers onstage delivering Cage’s stories in dynamic yet deliberately irrelevant one-minute bursts. This celebrated avant-garde collaboration pushes the boundaries of choreography and sound, and is one of Merce Cunningham’s most innovative works.

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.

#