An immersive, multi-media installation of live aerial performance, large-scale projected video, and electronic music, ANIMA alters our perspectives on the “sensation of time” and the pace and effects of climate change.
Fresh from the Venice Biennale 2023 and Tate Modern, PS21 is bringing ANIMA to the Pavilion Theater for its only appearances in North America.
August 31
-
September 2 [SOLD OUT] Contact boxoffice@ps21chatham.org to be placed on the waitlist. We will notify you if tickets become available.
An immersive multidisciplinary installation by French visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, theater director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin, ANIMA sits at the crossroads of visual, photographic, musical, video, and scenic arts. The work is grounded in the artists' interest in recent discoveries in paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate, whereby researchers project visions for the future, based on the metamorphoses of the natural world in the distant past. The arid expanses of the Sahara were once rich in vegetation fed by lakes and rivers, and Antarctic ice covers land where tropical rainforest once bloomed. ANIMA takes the audience on a journey through Earth’s seemingly fantastical landscapes, revealing the interconnectedness of all living organisms.
Through shifting and hypnotic images of palm trees, rocks, caves, and water in continual metamorphosis projected onto a triptych of giant screens, Goudal and Poésy confront the viewer with an experience of human impermanence. Thevenin’s music, a mix of electronics and recordings of sounds of flowing water, winds, and wildlife coalesces with the images to create a sense of the fragility of landscapes, the power of the elements, and the vertiginous nature of time.
About the Artists
Noémie Goudal
Noémie Goudal received an MA in photography at London’s Royal College of Art. Her practice involves the construction of ambitious staged, illusionistic installations centered on landscape, which she documents in film and photographs and into which she incorporates performance. Her interventions are grounded in research into the intersection of ecology and anthropology, in particular paleoclimatology, the analysis of climate and geology from the perspective of deep time, to explore the earth’s past and future. Her work has been presented at institutions and events in France including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Les Rencontres d’Arles; Festival d’Avignon; Le Grand Café Centre d’Art Contemporain, Saint-Nazaire; Musée Delacroix, Paris; and internationally at the Tate Modern, London; Kunstverein Hildesheim, Germany; Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Australia; Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; The Photographer’s Gallery, London; FOAM Museum, Amsterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon; and the Horniman Museum, London. Goudal’s work is held in public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; FOAM Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India and The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, UK. Noémie Goudal lives and works in Paris.
Maëlle Poésy
Actress, writer, and director Maëlle Poésy is Director of the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, Centre dramatique national. She trained at the École supérieure d'art dramatique of the Théâtre national de Strasbourg. In her work, she pursues a “theatre of confrontation” which questions society and its individual components. She appears often at the Festival d’Avignon, Lincoln Center, and the Festival TransAmériques and has directed, among other works, 7 Minutes at the Comédie-Française, Glory on Earth, at the Théâtre de la Cité Toulouse and Théâtre en mai festival (Dijon), and the short film Sans sommeil.
Chloé Moglia (at PS21 performed by Mathilde Van Volsem)
Chloé Moglia is a French trapeze aerial artist, choreographer, and dancer. Born in 1978, Moglia began her training on the trapeze at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois (ENACR) and studied at the Centre national des arts du cirque (CNAC). In 2009, she founded Compagnie Rhizome, which she continues to direct. Called “the artist who explodes the boundaries of the circus,” her practice is equally influenced by martial arts. Her shows and performances play with bodies, slowness, the laws of physics, and vertigo. A defender of embodied thought and of a sensitive representation of physicality, she combines attention and acuity by weaving together physical practice, reflection, and sensitivity.
Chloé Thévenin
Parisian DJ and musician Chloé Thévenin creates work ranging from techno to confessional downtempo and blues-influenced indie rock. Her experimental, cinematic solo albums feature guitars, intimate vocals, and abstract song structures. As a DJ, she spins at clubs and festivals around the world, including Le Pulp and Lumiere Noire in Paris. She also composes classical music, soundtracks, and scores for art and dance pieces.
PS21 and the Environment
The presentation of ANIMA continues PS21’s commitment to programming that raises questions or addresses the need for action around environmental preservation, global warming, and the quest for a sustainable future. Since 2020, we have featured productions from around the globe that tackled these themes in works of the highest artistic caliber. Highlights of our 2022 season included Philippe Quesne’s ecological fable Farm Fatale (from France); the Israeli Vertigo Dance Company in One. One & One, a vision of sustainability; Bang on a Can All-Stars cofounder Michael Gordon’s Field of Vision – 36 Percussionists performing on PS21’s rolling landscape; and a screening of Earth, Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s masterly 1930 critique of the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, to live accompaniment by DakhaBrakha, the Ukrainian ethno-chaos band.
In 2021, we brought Heartbeat Opera’s The Extinctionist to PS21, a cautionary vision of a future threatened by rising sea levels, and in 2020 the New York State premiere of John Luther Adams’s Ten Thousand Birds (2020). These and other performances took place in PS21’s Pavilion Theater, a green-energy marvel surrounded by 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands that are a haven to wildlife and visitors across the region. Integrated into the unspoiled campus, the theater embodies PS21’s commitments to the public: open, inviting, and optimized for their enjoyment, encouraging citizen expression and participation.
In 2022, PS21’s adventurous summer season embraced genres and companies from around the globe, 19 productions in four months, including seven from South Korea, Nigeria, Haiti, Canada, France, Israel, and Ukraine, with programs that address challenging contemporary issues. A number of the works were presented as part of PATHWAYS, PS21’s ambitious, multi-faceted series of spectacle, performances, art installations, international contemporary circus, and participatory events connecting nature and the arts. They included Farm Fatale, Field of Vision, and Compagnie Galmae’s C’est pas là, c’est par là (It’s not here, it’s over here). Writing about Farm Fatale, New York Times critic at large Jason Farago said “’It’s not easy being green. Full marks to Philippe Quesne’s sprightly eco-clown show ‘Farm Fatale,’ at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y. — a country theater that outclasses most of Manhattan.”
Tickets
Reserved Seating: $45
Performance Schedule: Thurs., Aug. 31 at 8:00 p.m. Sat., Sept. 2 at 8:00 p.m. Sun., Sept. 3 at 8:00 p.m.
Visiting PS21 Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, a state-of-the art venue on 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands in the heart of the Hudson Valley.
Transportation from New York City September 3. Charter mini-bus Cost: $50 one way
The bus will leave PS21 shortly after the show, around 21:15 pm on September 3, dropping off our guests at Lincoln Center. To hold a reservation, payment is required by September 1, 2 pm. For more information or to make reservations, email: elyssa@ps21chatham.org
Accessibility PS21’s theater is fully accessible and reservations for wheelchair spaces and aisle seating for those with mobility needs are available upon request. Ample parking is available, with spaces reserved for the disabled closest to the theater. Headsets may be requested at the box office prior to the show. Accessible restrooms are located in the theater lobby. For more information visit ps21chatham.org
Directions PS21 is located at 2980 New York Route 66, in Chatham, New York. Driving time from Manhattan is approximately 2-2.5 hours. Free parking is available. If taking Amtrak, PS21 is 15 miles from the Hudson station, and 21 miles from the Albany/Rensselaer station, amtrak.com. Transportation to and from the train stations are available through uber, and local taxi companies Northern cab (518-828-4222), H Transport LLC, (518) 577-5388, htransportllc.com, and McCanns Taxi (518-610-0071).
High-resolution Press Images for ANIMA can be found here.
MEDIA CONTACT: Tristan Geary tristan@ps21chatham.org (518) 392-6121
Before ANIMA on September 2, enjoy an intimate, family-style farm-to-table dînner en plein air with fresh ingredients from chef Leah Guadagnoli’s garden on our beautiful 100-acre campus, featuring the creators of ANIMA, local climate activists and environmentalists, where we'll discuss ANIMA as it relates to the climate crisis. Very limited tickets are available to the public for a short time. VIEW THE MENU.
Dinner and a show tickets for ANIMA on September 2 are sold out. However, you can email us at boxoffice@ps21chatham.org and be placed on the waitlist.
Credits
Concept, direction: Noémie Goudal, Maëlle Poésy
Suspension writing: Chloé Moglia With: Mathilde Van Volsem
Original music: Chloé Thévenin
Stage design: Hélène Jourdan
Lighting: Mathilde Chamoux
Costumes: Camille Vallat
Stage manager: Julien Poupon
Sound operator: Samuel Babouillard
Video and lighting operator: Pierre Mallaisé
Assistants: Clara Labrousse and Pauline Thoër
Production administrator: Miléna Noirot; assisted by Adèle Jaffredo, Marie Bloquel-Perrat
Film credits
Made by: Noémie Goudal, Maëlle Poésy; assisted by Claude Guillouard
Script: Mylène Mostini
Director of photography: Julien Malichier
Digital operator, optical calculator: Alexis Allemand
Camera assistant: Julien Saez
Special effects: Léo Leroyer
Electrician: Adrien Chata; assisted by Telma Langui
Head stage decorator: Thierry Jaulin; assisted by Eleonore Sense and Delphine Bachelard
Props: Thomas Piffaut
Post-production: Méchant
Color grading: Serge Antony
Production: Clara Labrousse and Claude Guillouard; assisted by Aménophis Boum Mak and Pauline Thoër; trainee: Salomé Fau
Appearances: Alexis Allemand, Aménophis Boum Make, Georges Olivier, Claude Guillouard, Maëlle Poésy, Noémie Goudal, Thomas Piffaut, Graciela Walinsky
A performance-installation conceived and devised by: Noémie Goudal and Maëlle Poésy
Based on the work Post Atlantica by Noémie Goudal
In collaboration with: Comune di Venezia / Cultura Venezia / Teatro del Parco
This project: came to fruition with the complicity of Christoph Wiesner and Les Rencontres d’Arle
Production: Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, CDN
Film production and staging: Mondes nouveaux, a programme initiated by the French government as part of the Culture de France Relance, a scheme providing assistance in the conception and implementation of artistic projects
Co-production: Compagnie Crossroad; Atelier Noémie Goudal; Espace des Arts, Scène nationale de Chalon-sur-Saône; L’Azimut - Pôle National Cirque en Île-de-France - Antony/Châtenay- Malabry
With support from: Rhizome – Chloé Moglia, FONPEPS
Note: ANIMA was created at the 76th edition of the Festival d’Avignon with the support of the Kering Foundation and Les Rencontres d’Arle
The production/performances of ANIMA received support from Villa Albertine.
Additionally, this engagement is supported by The Audience Building Project, a program of the Lake Placid Center for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor and New York State Legislature; and members of PS21 Producers Circle, with a lead support by Deborah Lans and Sharon Grubin.
SUPPORT PS21
We thank you for your ongoing support. Your contributions allow us to continue to present our adventurous programming and free and low-cost community initiatives. Your donations also help to preserve our many trails and beautiful 100-acre campus. We hope you will consider making a donation today.
Venue Details
PS21 Open-Air Pavilion Theater
2980 New York 66 Chatham, New York 12037
PS/21 Inc
Support PS21
Even in the best of times, ticket sales cover only a fraction of PS21’s costs; therefore, we rely on you to continue supporting our endeavors. Please consider making a donation today.
About PS21
A vibrant center for contemporary performance in the Hudson Valley, PS21 “presents work that challenges and invites” (The New York Times): adventurous productions by leading and emerging American and international artists in music, dance, and theater, and visionaries creating entirely new genres. On our open-air Pavilion Theater stage, across our expansive, unspoiled grounds, and in the diverse surrounding communities, PS21 cultivates and presents productions that transcend aesthetic boundaries and revitalize existing artistic languages and grammars. Throughout the year, we host developmental residencies for dancers, musicians, actors, and creators of original, even unclassifiable new work. Rooted in community collaboration, PS21’s programming engages creatively with critical global and social issues. It is a mecca for innovative and original artistic voices, a destination for performance that can be experienced nowhere else in the region. PS21’s Pavilion Theater is a green-energy marvel surrounded by 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands that are a haven to wildlife and visitors across the region. Integrated into our unspoiled campus, the theater embodies our commitments to the public: open, inviting, and optimized for their enjoyment and encouraging citizen expression and participation.
Photography PS21 will take photos of this event for use in social media and on our website. The photos sometimes include audiences. Your attendance at this performance indicates you consent to appear in PS21 photography. If you would prefer not to appear in any photos, please let a staff member know, and we will be glad to accommodate your request.
Add To Calendar
Share 
