Carlos Soto is a director, designer, and performer who has worked with the artist and director Robert Wilson since 1997 on numerous productions in the United States and Europe. He has performed at the Guggenheim Museum, Pace Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, and Kampnagel Hamburg, among many others.
On Nov. 9, Mr. Soto will engage in a different kind of performance at the Watermill Center. He has organized the menu and overall environment for Icaros, the center’s Artists’ Table Dinner, a celebration for the year-round community of the traditions, artistic heritage, and food culture of the East End that will feature a performance directed by Lynsey Peisinger, a center artist-in-residence.
“During our summer program, we have over 100 artists living and working on site, so we have a chef here,” said Brian O’Mahoney, the center’s communications manager. “Every summer Carlos has been here, for the past 10 years at least, he will give the chef a night off and cook for everybody. He does a big production, an amazing meal, so Carlos just seemed the natural choice to bring that magic from the summer to this event.”
The evening will begin with an indoor-outdoor cocktail hour at 6:30 before moving to the main studio space, where the dinner and performance will take place. “Carlos and I came up with a kind of collective performative moment to take place during that dinner,” said Ms. Peisinger. “There will be five or six singers in the room, and it will be something where the audience and singers join to create some kind of moment.”
She added that other things will happen during the dinner with the performers, but “in terms of audience participation, there’s only so long something like that can go, where you can create the energetic content you want.”
During her month-long residence, Ms. Peisinger will conduct workshops with local residents that will culminate in a public showing. Of her work in general, she said, “If I’m doing a long durational piece or a large-scale public participatory piece, it’s always about how to create connective spaces for people. I think what will happen at the dinner is totally in line with that.”
The center expects between 100 and 120 guests at the dinner. Individual tickets start at $250. Proceeds will support the center’s efforts to create and maintain a yearlong dialogue between its resident artists and the surrounding community.