An artist is continually in search of home, that often elusive place to feel welcome, nourished, and unafraid.
We have found that home at Baryshnikov Arts—a home where we can build and rebuild, risking and falling and starting again with new understanding—feeling not just supported but enthusiastically embraced. A place that encourages us to make bold artistic choices, reminding us that failure is not failure unless you stop. Baryshnikov Arts has given us the two most fundamental and yet most difficult to obtain hallmarks of making theater: time and space. In the light-drenched studios on West 37th Street, we have been granted priceless opportunities to take a seed of an idea and develop it into a fully fledged work of theater.
Throughout our three residencies in the Baryshnikov Arts studios, and several presentations, we have been given that oasis of time and space along with spiritual nourishment to build a piece that would absolutely not exist otherwise. The generosity and kindness of Misha, Sonja, and the entire staff has made our collaboration possible. Baryshnikov Arts is so clearly a space founded and run by artists; they, more than any other organization we’ve been involved with, understand exactly what an artist needs.
As necessary as it is to have a space where we can come together as a group to move, dance, sing, speak, and play, another gift of a place like Baryshnikov Arts is the way the building allowed us to become part of an incredible community of makers. The lunches in the lounge, the conversations in the hallways, and the invitations to view each other’s work were a surprising and abundant gift throughout our time on 37th street. Our fondest wish would be for future artists to have the same fortune, inhabiting these studios and finding inspiration and the opening up of the imagination that comes with any residency there. The walls of Baryshnikov Arts don’t just talk—they bend and leap and whirl.
Organizations like these are rare and somewhat singular. This year-end we hope you will consider making a donation of any amount on behalf of all the artists who have passed through these doors and benefited from Baryshnikov Arts’s unwavering commitment to their mission. It is not an overstatement to say that Baryshnikov Arts has given us even more than a home—it has been a sanctuary of creativity, hope, and light. We are forever grateful to Baryshnikov Arts and aspire to offer to the wider community of the city a theatrical endeavor worthy of the many gifts we have received there.
Sincerely,
Jessica Hecht