(Photo credit: Caroline Tompkins)

Brooklyn Youth Chorus has announced “Port(al),” a site-specific performance that explores the history of Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The performance installation, which starts on May 1, 2025, will feature collaborations with co-composer and co-founder and artistic director of the National Sawdust Paola Prestini, co-composer, librettist, and founder and former co-host of Radio Lab, Jad Aburmrad, and director and co-librettist Jessica Grindstaff, who is also co-founder of Phantom Limb Company.

The project explores such historical figures as historian Howard Zinn, drag king Rusty Brown, activist Clarence L. Irving, and mezzo-soprano Eugenia Farrar.

“Through the Navy Yard, choristers are learning about their own history, the history of the world, and the evolution of how marginalized groups have been treated in our society—and how they’ve shaped it. As we’ve all dug into the past, the more personal and individual stories have taken center stage, rather than the grand movements of history,” said Brooklyn Youth Chorus founder and artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker per an official press statement.

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