STATEN ISLAND, NY — Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden has named four new artists in residence for its Performing Arts Salon Saturdays program, with performances scheduled throughout 2026.
The artists will present works in progress at 2 p.m. on the following dates: Madelyn Sher on Jan. 11, Kevin Lee-Y Green on March 28, Abbie Goldberg on May 2, and Torge Goderstad on May 30. Schedule details are available at snug-harbor.org/pass.
“This year’s PASS residency cohort brings a dynamic blend of the performing arts to Snug Harbor,” said Melissa West, director and senior curator of the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor. “Each of the selected artists are pushing boundaries in their discipline and will transform our cultural park with their creative work and ideas.”
The program received a record number of applications this year since shifting to an open call format in 2020, according to Snug Harbor. Artists are selected through a juried process with panelists from throughout the performing arts field.
The residency provides time, space, an honorarium, and curatorial support to artists developing original works in dance, music, theater and multidisciplinary performance. Residents live in historic cottages on the 83-acre campus and have access to studio space at the Dance Center. Each residency concludes with a public work-in-progress performance.
Sher is a Staten Island dance and theater artist whose choreographic work explores rhythms of change and cycles of loving and losing. She holds an MFA in choreography and performance from Smith College and currently serves as fellow in dance at Emory University. In 2025, she received a DCLA Premier Grant from Staten Island Arts to develop “Dandelions,” a multidisciplinary composition.
Green is a director, choreographer, and community arts educator from Bolivia, North Carolina. His work has appeared on television series including “Our Kind of People” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” as well as the upcoming film “The Supremes At Earl’s All You Can Eat.” He founded Techmoja Dance and Theater Company with his mother, Donna Joyner Green.
Goldberg is a multidisciplinary artist from Maine and a member of Pink Umbrella Theater’s inaugural Disability Cohort. Their work has been performed at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, and venues in Tokyo, among other locations. They developed “Believing Cassandra” through The New Opera and Musical Theater Initiative.
Goderstad is an American artist working with composition, space, sculpture, and instrument building. He graduated from Berlin’s Universität der Künste with a master’s degree in sound studies and sonic arts in July 2024, and holds a bachelor’s degree in jazz double bass from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
The PASS program also includes choreographer Maria Bauman, who founded MBDance in 2009. Her company’s world premiere at the Snug Harbor Dance Festival this past summer kicked off the season in partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative, according to West. Snug Harbor has partnered with CUNY Dance Initiative since 2018.
The residency receives lead support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, with additional support from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
West described the residency as the only program of its kind on Staten Island, creating a platform for artists and audiences to engage through creative development.