And audience size restrictions weren’t such a handicap, as much of what Siyanko wanted to present was, in her words, “very niche.” The pandemic also accelerated a trend: the public already drawn to this type of work — and the artists who create it — moved to the area. (Chatham is a 20-minute drive from the towns of Hudson and Catskill.) Donors gathered and gave more. The PS21 budget increased by about 50 percent, Siyanko said, with a large surplus in 2021.
This may sound like cultural gentrification, but Siyanko is also committed to low ticket prices and accessibility without indulgence. The Pathways events, in particular, are designed as entry points leading to PS21’s campus and its more adventurous programming.
Pathways kicked off in 2020 with unconventional dance classes and with the Alarm Will Sound chamber orchestra scattered around the site performing John Luther Adams’ Ten Thousand Birds. “Kids loved it,” said Siyanko, as did the Montreal acrobats who will be romping in the trees of nearby Crellin Park in 2021. Some Pathways events, like this one, take place off-campus, connecting with schools and local arts organizations. Others have brought local students to PS21, in one case to rehearse and perform with experimental flautist Claire Chase, and in another to participate in theater camp with the Wooster Group.
Onikeku fits right in with the Pathways project (up to the theater camp confidence exercises he put in Middle Ground. In an interview for Middle Ground, he explained how growing up in Nigeria, he was drawn to contemporary dance as a mode in which “you can have your own ideas”, and how, while dancing in France, he ended up at the École Nationale Supérieur des Arts du Cirque, where he studied contemporary circus that reminded him of the total theater of the Yoruba tradition.
From the beginning of his career, as an awareness-raising artist, he modeled after the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. In a series of solos, Onikeku explored philosophical ideas: the isolation of exile, the difference between history and past, the body as a repository for generational memory. Although he had success in Europe, appearing at the prestigious Avignon Festival when he was still twenty, he was “appalled by the dictatorship of the art market,” he said, the cycle of producing and touring and producing again.