"THE photographer Mathew Pokoik swears he didn’t choose this charming Catskills town as the home for an interdisciplinary festival because of its almost total lack of cellphone reception. 'Although it also makes for a perfect residency experience,' he added in an e-mail message about the summer-long event he founded with the choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke, his wife...."
"Perched on a hillside above the Esopus Creek in Mount Tremper, there is a center for contemporary performance and visual art, dedicated to providing a rich and challenging environment where artists and audiences can stretch the limits of their understanding. The founders of Mount Tremper Arts (MTA), Mathew Pokoik and Aynsley Vandenbroucke, are young, energetic and daring...."
"Vandenbroucke and Pokoik, the founders and directors of Mount Tremper Arts, are themselves a “hybrid couple”: she's a choreographer, he's a photographer. At 33 and 35 respectively, they may be the youngest impresarios in the Hudson Valley—and among the most impressive...."
"Now in its third year, this homespun but sophisticated Catskills festival just keeps getting better...."
"It seems silly, in a way, to think of dances as being handmade. But the word comes to mind when sinking into Aynsley Vandenbroucke's carefully constructed works. Spare and delicate, they leave ample room for the imagination...."
We've had some excellent recent press (and a collective audience review) for our off site Spring Season at CPR - Center for Performance Research, in Williamsburg Brooklyn and for our upcoming summer festival at MTA...
Woodstock Times
Mt. Tremper Arts Fest
by Paul Smart
July 17, 2008
Dancer and choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke, co-founder and director of the ambitious Mt. Tremper Arts Festival inaugurating Saturday, July 19 at their new arts center just west of Zen Mountain Monastery on the way to Phoenicia, says the idea for the mix of photographic exhibitions and lectures, dance recitals, musical performances and good old fun running through Labor Day started germinating for her and her husband Mathew Pokoik when both were still kids.
It gestated as each built their art, step by step, and established creative careers in New York City- this idea of getting friends new and old together in a bucolic setting for workshopping and performance, for pushing art to new limits with lots of room for feedback.
“Matt grew up coming to the area a lot when he was little,” Vandenbroucke says of the couple’s decision to move to Mt. Tremper a couple of years ago and build a post and beam barn as an arts center and get hopping on their festival dreams. “He also new a lot of people in the area from having gone to Bard.”
Contemporary Arts in Mt. Tremper!
Dance Listings
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Published: July 18, 2008
DANCE
★MOUNT TREMPER ARTS FESTIVAL (Saturday) What, I have to hang out in the Catskills in the summer to see dance performances and visual art exhibitions when I could be inhaling exhaust fumes in the city?! Fine, twist my arm. On Saturday the Mount Tremper Arts Festival celebrates its inaugural opening night with a new photography exhibition, an installation by jill sigman/thinkdance with D.J. Joro Boro and the Klezmer punk band Golem. Performances include Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group (July 26); the choreographer Jonah Bokaer and the poet Anne Carson (Aug. 2); Dusan Tynek Dance Theater (Aug. 16) and others. Did I mention it’s in the Catskills? (Through Aug. 31.) At 8 p.m., Mount Tremper, N.Y., (877) 238-5596, mttremperarts.com; $20.
Listen to interview here
(It’s at the end of the show)
Finally, it’s the ArtSpace. Today we introduce you to a dancer with a difference. Aynsley Vandenbroucke, dancer, choreographer and founder of the Mount Tremper Arts in New York’s Catskills…was told by her teachers that she thinks too much to be a dancer. She’s rebelled against the rules that make dancers obedient robots with perfect technique. Her work combines thought with everyday motion.
Aynsley Vandenbroucke is a dancer and head of the Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group. You can find out more about her and Mount Tremper Arts, as well as the center’s summer festival, at mttremperarts. com.