Some good ideas take a long time to gestate, but turn out to have been worth waiting for. One of those, we may hope, is the transformation of a former lumberyard in Catskill into a performing arts incubator to be known as…(wait for it)…the Lumberyard. It’s a process that started in early 2016, when a Washington, DC-based not-for-profit, then called the American Dance Institute, turned its gaze upon the Hudson Valley in search of more affordable quarters.
Acquiring the former Dunn Builders’ Supply company facility with help from a half-million-dollar Empire State Development grant, the organization renamed itself Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts and set about to renovate the Catskill industrial site. Putting a new twist on a trail already blazed by other mid-Hudson venues as sites for out-of-town tryouts before an artist hits the Big Apple – think Powerhouse at Vassar for theater, the Falcon for high-end jazz, Kaatsbaan for dance, Mount Tremper Arts for avant-garde performance, the Bardavon for Bob Dylan tours – Lumberyard aims to become “the only organization in the US dedicated to providing technical residencies that culminate in out-of-town premieres.”
The process of opening the Catskill campus for that purpose won’t be complete until the end of this year, so several nearby stages – including Hudson Hall, Club Helsinki and the Bridge Street Theatre – are pitching in to enable Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts to present its inaugural season, dubbed the Under Construction Summer Festival. It kicks off with the world-premiere performance of Scat! the latest work by Bessie, Capezio, Doris Duke and Dance Magazine award-winning choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the renowned contemporary dance troupe Urban Bush Women.
Zollar calls Scat! “my family’s story. It is a personal and collective story of a family and a people, moving from the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration.” A dance-driven musical set in the 1940s and ’50s that takes place in a fictional nightclub, it will be performed in the very real-life Club Helsinki Hudson on Friday and Saturday, June 29 and 30 at 9 p.m. and on Sunday, July 1 at 7 p.m. With dramaturgy by Talvin Wilks, Scat! features an original jazz score composed by Craig Harris and performed live by Harris with a five-piece band and two vocalists.
Lumberyard’s summer festival continues with Streb’s Singular Extreme Actions at the Lumberyard, July 6 to 8; Bridgman/Packer Dance’s Truck at the Lumberyard, July 13 and 14; d. Sabela Grimes at the Bridge Street Theatre, July 27 to 29; Jodi Melnick’s One of 65,000 Gestures/New Bodies at Hudson Hall, August 3 to 5; John Jasperse’s Hinterland at Hudson Hall, August 17 to 19; Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez performing Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd at Hudson Hall, August 24 to 26; and winds up on a high note with tapmeister Savion Glover at the Lumberyard on September 1 and 2.
For reservations to see Scat! call Club Helsinki at (518) 828-4800 or visit www.helsinkihudson.com. It’s located at 405 Columbia Street in Hudson. For more details on the Lumberyard’s Under Construction Summer Festival, visit https://bit.ly/2ysA22I.
Lumberyard presents Urban Bush Women’s Scat! Friday-Sunday, June 29-July 1, $35-$55, Club Helsinki, 405 Columbia Street, Hudson; (518) 828-4800, www.helsinkihudson.com.
Join the family! 
