Community to take center stage at Dive Barn

On Sunday, Sept. 6, PS21 in Chatham, New York, will host a celebration of community through dance at its second annual Dive Barn performance at the organization’s Dance Barn.

Dive Barn is the brainchild of dancer, teacher and choreographer Sayer Mansfield, who has dedicated her life to contemporary and experimental dance. She studied in the Department of Dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. She’s performed with companies including Pilobolus, Compagnie Marie Chouinardand Mark Morris Dance Group. Her work has been featured in films including “Little Women,” “Maestro” and “Sproutland.” She has served on the faculties of Jacob’s Pillow, Phillips Academy Andover, as well as Harvard and Yale Universities.

Recently, though, Mansfield’s been focusing on her community in Columbia County, New York. As has been a theme since the COVID-19 pandemic, a groundswell of creative people have pulled up their city roots to plant itself in the fertile soil of the countryside.

For the past year, Mansfield has been teaching these recent transplants and lifelong residents alike to dance at her Tuesday Night Dance group, or TND, as it’s known at PS21.

The group became so popular that she had to add a second night, so now TND can mean either Tuesday or Thursday Night Dance. Each group has a rotating enrollment of 30 to 60 locals, fueled by fervent word of mouth, but the classes can get even bigger. They meet at the Dance Barn at PS21, Mansfield’s new home away from home. There, she teaches actors, painters, musicians, desk workers and farmers how to get comfortable moving their bodies.

Dive Barn will feature two unique performances, both choreographed by Mansfield, with music by local musicians Raena Jade and Elori Saxl. One dance will be a more intimate performance by Mansfield and her collaborator, actor and dancer Ashley Hill. The other will feature a large group of her class regulars, most of whom have never performed dance onstage. This is a chance for many non-dancers to show what they’ve learned through the TND group classes and celebrate the diverse mix of bodies that Mansfield’s been molding over the past several months.

Dive Barn is part of a bigger multiday event at PS21 called Commonground. PS21 describes it as a “free festival of large-scale live performance and spectacle” taking place Friday, Sept. 4, through Monday, Sept. 7. Alongside Dive Barn will be world premiere performances of “FIELD” by director, writer and electronics artist Andrew Schneider, which was commissioned by PS21, as well as “SUPERDRUM X.”

SUPERDRUM has been an ongoing project by Dutch musical arts collective Touki Delphone. For this iteration, the collective collaborated with theater company Veenfabriek to build 100 self-playing drum machines that use found twigs from forests and sidewalks as drumsticks. The drums are connected to a system that can control them all together or individually. Each night, a human drummer will collaborate with the piece.

As if all of this weren’t enough, PS21 will open its expansive campus to the community before the performances, offering apple picking, lawn games, West African food from Chez Diarra and free ice cream. “FIELD” will be presented Friday, Saturday and Sunday. “SUPERDRUM X” will take place every day of the Commonground Festival.

To learn more about Dive Barn, PS21 and to get tickets to Commonground, visit ps21chatham.org.