In Gowanus, Brooklyn, an enormous red-brick structure towers over the rest of the neighborhood’s three-story landscape. Formerly a power plant, the 117-year-old building is now home to Powerhouse Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting artists. At 170,000 square feet, Powerhouse is not short on space. The facility hosts art-makers, fabricators, workshops, public programs—and, beginning September 25, a brand-new arts festival, Powerhouse: International.
At the festival’s helm is Tony Award–winning producer David Binder, who from 2019 until 2023 served as the artistic director of the nearby Brooklyn Academy of Music. Seeing Powerhouse for the first time inspired Binder to curate a new performing arts festival in the space. He looked to the building for inspiration. “It’s so arresting, with its graffiti-clad walls and its big open spaces,” he says. “The experience of entering the building awakens your senses and invites you to engage with work that is challenging and adventurous and multidisciplinary.”
All 13 of Powerhouse: International’s events fall into at least one of the programming’s many buckets, including musical acts, theater, installations, and dance. The festival kicks off September 25–27 with Skatepark, a 2023 work by Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen that brings skateboarding into a theatrical setting. Ingvartsen, who is based in Brussels, is eager to see how New York City audiences will respond when the work is presented in Powerhouse’s Grand Hall. “There’s a porousness to the work, between the audience and the stage,” she explains. “When audiences say (at the end of a performance of Skatepark) that they wanted to get up and join us, that, to me, means that the piece has lifted the energy from the public, which is how it operates.”
Mette Ingvartsen’s skatepark. Photo by Pierre Gondard, Courtesy Powerhouse Arts.
While Skatepark doesn’t require audience involvement in a traditional sense, Kate McIntosh’s Worktable, an installation running October 4 to November 9, hinges on it. Originally commissioned in 2011 as part of an initiative funded by Roehampton University, Worktable asks participants to select an object to take apart—tools and safety goggles included. There’s a set of instructions and a series of rooms, but what it all means in the end is entirely up to the individual.
McIntosh, who trained as a contemporary dancer, has been creating work that blurs the boundaries between installation and performance since 2004. “I slowly shifted my interest from the body of the performer to the body of the audience, which is how I arrived at this work—the audience is very busy inside of it,” she explains.
Powerhouse: International’s lineup also includes U.S. debuts from Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos (Larsen C, October 16–18) and French-Malagasy choreographer and dancer Soa Ratsifandrihana (Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna, October 28–30). Rounding out the dance offerings are Hofesh Shechter’s Theatre of Dreams (November 13–15) and Amari Marshall’s The Imagining, a full-scale dance party that will close out the festival on December 13.
Binder’s approach to the festival’s dance curation was informed by his recent observations of the local dance scene. “We’re at a time when there is less international work on New York stages, and walls are going up around the world, both literally and metaphorically,” he says. He hopes that audiences feel compelled to experience multiple shows, which is why over 10,000 tickets have been priced at $30. But most of all, Binder looks forward to Powerhouse’s temporary transformation into a buzzing hub of performance and interactivity.
“When you bring in this intersection of ideas and disciplines, that, to me, represents the artistic spirit that drives a city like New York,” he says. “That’s what we’re trying to do here—it’s a meeting point, an intersection, a crossroads. It’s everything.”
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