CPR Artist-in-Residence Program 2027: A $2,000 Stipend, 20 Free Rehearsal Hours and Up to 150 Subsidized Hours in Williamsburg for Six NYC Performance Artists, Closing 24 August 2026

CPR Artist-in-Residence Program 2027: A $2,000 Stipend, 20 Free Rehearsal Hours and Up to 150 Subsidized Hours in Williamsburg for Six NYC Performance Artists, Closing 24 August 2026

CPR – Center for Performance Research has opened its annual open call for the 2027 Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Program. Six New York City-based artists will be selected for a year-long residency running January through December 2027, each receiving a $2,000 stipend, 20 free hours of rehearsal space, the right to book up to 150 subsidized hours in CPR’s Williamsburg studios, curatorial support, and public presentation slots through the organization’s OPEN LAB and OPEN AiR formats. Applications close Monday, 24 August 2026 at 5:00 p.m. EST, and CPR states plainly that late submissions will not be accepted.

This is a space-and-time residency rather than a large cash award, and that framing matters when you decide whether to spend a weekend on the application. In a city where a well-equipped sprung-floor studio with theatrical lighting is one of the hardest things for an independent choreographer or performance maker to afford, a full year of priority booking is often worth considerably more than the headline stipend. The program is aimed squarely at artists whose work would change materially if they had somewhere reliable to make it.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Residency Actually Provides

The package has four distinct components, and it is worth separating them because they serve different purposes in a working artist’s year.

The stipend. Each AiR receives $2,000. CPR does not describe this as a living wage or a commissioning fee, and you should not plan around it as one. Treat it as unrestricted seed money — a way to pay a collaborator for a few rehearsals, cover a videographer, buy materials, or absorb the childcare and transit costs that make studio time possible in the first place.

The studio time. This is the core of the offer. Twenty hours are free outright for the residency cycle. Beyond that, an AiR may book up to 150 subsidized rehearsal hours in either of CPR’s two studios, with priority booking that extends beyond the residency year itself — January 2027 through February 2028. AiRs also get advance access to CPR’s rehearsal booking calendar, which in practice is the difference between shaping a rehearsal schedule around your project and scrambling for whatever slots survive the general release.

The public programs. AiRs present through two curated formats. OPEN LAB asks residents to facilitate embodied workshops or feedback-generating performances organized around a central research question. OPEN AiR is where residents share current practice and research; CPR notes these may take a variety of forms, including solo presentations of new work in development, multi-artist programs that create dialogue between practices, and other formats responsive to each artist’s research. CPR provides additional artist fees and resources for these programs, along with access to technical equipment and production support.

The curatorial relationship. Residents receive curatorial support and feedback from CPR staff and fellow artists across the year, plus peer dialogue within the cohort of six. For artists working outside institutional structures, this sustained critical attention is frequently the part they cite afterwards.

The Spaces You Would Be Working In

CPR occupies a 4,000 square foot ground-floor facility in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at 361 Manhattan Avenue, Unit 1. There are two flexible studios.

The Large Studio is 1,875 square feet of flexible rehearsal and performance space with an LED theatrical lighting system, full-range sound, projection capability, and a sprung wood dance floor with white marley. It seats up to 68 people, which sets a realistic scale for what a showing can be.

The Small Studio works as a rehearsal room, gallery and meeting space. It has floor-to-ceiling storefront windows facing the street, track lighting, and a sprung wood floor — a different proposition for work that wants daylight, passers-by, or an installation logic rather than a black-box frame.

CPR is a fully ADA-compliant and accessible venue with two all-gender restrooms, one of which is wheelchair accessible. A floor plan, images and technical specifications are published on CPR’s site, and reading them before you write your proposal is a concrete advantage — see the next section.

Who Is Eligible

CPR’s eligibility rules are short and enforced.

• Prior public presentation. Eligible applicants have previously had their work publicly presented. This is not a first-showing residency.
• A five-year gap. Applicants must not have been selected as a CPR Artist-in-Residence in the last five years.
• NYC-based, exclusively. The residency is for New York City-based artists. CPR cannot provide US visas, travel, accommodation or other living expenses. The open call adds a pointed note: if you are NYC-based but travelling or out of town for a majority of the residency cycle, consider honestly whether these resources suit your practice. That is a signal about how the panel reads availability.
• Any applicant structure. Individual artists, companies, collaboratives and collectives may all apply, but each application is considered as a single residency — a five-person collective and a solo artist receive the same stipend and the same hours.
• Not current undergraduates. Students currently enrolled in undergraduate study are not eligible.

CPR states it is committed to supporting artists from every background, maintains an expansive approach to performance practice, and strongly encourages BIPOC artists, LGBTQ+ artists, immigrant artists, artists with disabilities, and artists across generations to apply.

What the Panel Is Looking For

AiRs are selected by an independent panel of artists, curators and arts leaders rather than by CPR staff alone. CPR frames the open call and outside panel as a deliberate attempt at a more accessible and equitable process, and at widening visibility and resources across the field.

The open call publishes its own list of considerations for a competitive application, and these are unusually specific for a residency call. Read them as the rubric:

1. Demonstrated commitment to CPR’s core values — artistic practices that prioritize play, risk, experimentation, curiosity, new forms, modes of embodiment and presence, and urgency.
2. Understanding the scope of CPR’s resources, and showing convincingly how you would use them across the residency cycle.
3. A central research question in your proposal that will be explored for the duration of the residency.
4. A clear picture of how your practice would be activated by the OPEN LAB and OPEN AiR public programming formats specifically.
5. An experimental relationship to form — CPR states that classical or traditional artforms will not be considered unless they are subverted or disrupted through modes of experimentation.

Point five is the clearest filter in the document. If your project is a conventional presentation of a classical or traditional form, this residency is not a match unless the disruption of that form is genuinely central to what you are proposing, and you can say what the disruption is.

Point three is the one applicants most often underplay. A research question is not a project description. “I am making a 40-minute duet about grief” is a plan; “what happens to a duet’s timing when neither performer can see the other” is a question that can be pursued for twelve months, produce different answers in month three and month nine, and give an OPEN LAB workshop something to do.

How to Apply, and How to Prepare

Applications are submitted through an online form linked from the open-call page. CPR strongly recommends drafting narrative answers in a separate document before you enter them, which is sound advice for any browser-based form — and it also lets you get a second reader on your answers.

CPR asks applicants to read the residency description and criteria in full before applying. The specific set of questions, work-sample requirements and any word limits live inside the application form itself; this guide does not restate them, because the form is the authoritative source and its fields can change between cycles. Open it early enough to see what it asks for.

A workable preparation sequence for the days before 24 August:

• Open the form first, not last. Whatever it asks for, you want to know now rather than on the afternoon of the deadline.
• Read the technical specs and floor plan. Naming the Large Studio’s projection capability or the Small Studio’s storefront windows in your proposal is the cheapest possible way to show you understand the resources rather than treating them as generic rehearsal space.
• Write the research question before the project description. Then check that the description follows from the question rather than the other way round.
• Map the calendar. Twelve months, 20 free hours, up to 150 subsidized hours, two public program formats. Sketch roughly how those distribute across the year. A panel reading six strong proposals will notice the one that has thought about pacing.
• Check your work sample links. Confirm they play, are not password-protected in a way you have forgotten about, and start at the moment you want the panel to see.
• Send questions to [email protected] with enough lead time for a reply. CPR’s general telephone number is 718.349.1210.

Timeline and What Happens Next

Applications are accepted until 5:00 p.m. EST on Monday, 24 August 2026 — roughly two and a half weeks from now for anyone reading this in early August. Late submissions will not be accepted. Notifications are made in November 2026, and the residency itself runs January through December 2027, with priority studio booking extending through February 2028.

That November notification date is worth noting if you are assembling a 2027 season. You will know your CPR status before most spring 2027 commitments have to be locked, which makes this residency relatively easy to plan alongside other applications rather than in competition with them.

Common Mistakes

• Applying from outside New York City. The restriction is explicit and there is no discretionary exception described. So is the note about being out of town for most of the cycle.
• Ignoring the five-year rule. If you held a CPR residency within the last five years, you are not eligible this round.
• Submitting a project description with no research question. The call names this as a criterion; leaving it out reads as not having read the call.
• Treating the public programs as an afterthought. OPEN LAB and OPEN AiR are named formats with distinct logics — one is workshop and feedback oriented around a question, the other is a sharing of current practice. Proposals that show how the work meets each format specifically are doing what the criteria ask.
• Budgeting the $2,000 as production money for a finished premiere. The residency is structured around process, space and research. A proposal that reads as “I need a venue for a show I have already made” is answering a different call.
• Leaving the form to the last hour. A 5:00 p.m. deadline on a Monday means the working day ends before the evening does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an application fee? The open call does not mention one. If fee status matters to you, confirm directly with [email protected] before the deadline.

Can a collective apply? Yes. Individuals, companies, collaboratives and collectives are all eligible, but each application is treated as a single residency for the purposes of the stipend and studio hours.

Do I have to be a dance artist? No. CPR describes the program as supporting NYC-based artists working within various perspectives of contemporary dance, performance and time-based art, and states an expansive approach to performance practice. The experimental orientation matters more than the discipline label.

Can I apply if I am a graduate student? The stated exclusion is current undergraduate students. Graduate students are not named as ineligible, but if your situation is ambiguous, ask CPR rather than assuming.

What if I need more than 170 hours of studio time? The 20 free and up to 150 subsidized hours are the residency allocation. AiRs also receive advance access to the booking calendar and priority booking through February 2028, so additional time can be arranged through CPR’s normal rental process.

Is the $2,000 restricted? The call describes it simply as a $2,000 stipend without listing restrictions. Nothing in the public description ties it to specific expense categories.

Who Funds the Program

CPR lists direct support for the 2027 AiR Program from the Americans for the Arts National Arts Relief Fund, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Howard Gilman Foundation, IndieSpace, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

That funding mix is a useful signal about the program’s stability and its accountability to public arts funding in New York — and, for applicants, a reminder that this is a genuinely local program rooted in the city’s arts infrastructure rather than a national competition that happens to be held in Brooklyn.

Official Links and Contacts

• Open call and full criteria: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/opencall-2027airprogram
• Application questions: [email protected]
• General inquiries: [email protected]
• Telephone: 718.349.1210
• Location: CPR – Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Avenue, Unit 1, Brooklyn, New York 11211

Details here are drawn from CPR’s published 2027 open call. Confirm anything decision-critical against the official page before you submit, since organizations occasionally adjust deadlines or requirements mid-call.