A Leap Back in Time: Hamptons Dance Project Stirs Nostalgia for Artistic Director

For Jose Sebastian, most of what he considers “the Hamptons” lives inside his memories.

It’s jumping and running along the endless beach as a child. It’s sand and wind, ocean and salt, and meeting new friends.

It’s falling in love with movement.

“It was really important for me to share my memories with my colleagues and friends,” he said, “and to really just create more memories out there.”

That is precisely what he has done. For the seventh year running, Sebastian — along with a corps of internationally renowned dancers and choreographers — will present Hamptons Dance Project VII. The next iteration of the annual three-day dance festival, this year in partnership with LTV Studios, will stage outdoors, starting Friday, August 8, at Fireplace Lodge, a 20-acre farm in Springs overlooking Gardiner’s Bay.

“I just have this sentimentality for the Hamptons,” Sebastian said, “and I constantly want to get out there and really give back in a way to the community with this show.”

The idea was born in 2018, following the final performance of American Ballet Theatre’s Metropolitan Opera House season. Sebastian, a corps member, was walking alongside his mother, Pat, in upper Manhattan when he found himself reminiscing on their East End summers together.

They were far from extravagant, he explained. She, a single mother, had adopted him at age 2, taking him out of New York City’s foster care system, but on a teacher’s salary, he said.

“Really, I still to this day don’t know how she did it,” he said, “but she provided my childhood with these amazing, amazing memories out in the Hamptons.”

Someday, he told his mother years later in Manhattan, he wanted to bring dancers to the Hamptons, too.

“I don’t believe people should say, ‘Someday’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Just do it. I’ll help you.’”

Initially, most of the dancers were fellow company members from ABT, Sebastian explained, but in the years since and as word spread, so has the pool of talent. This year’s program features returning dancers Sierra Armstrong, Aran Bell, Lauren Bonfiglio, Catherine Hurlin, Tyler Maloney, Jarod Alexander, Lloyd Knight, Jonathon Royce Windham and, of course, Sebastian, as well as newcomers Griffin Massey, Carly Olson and Joseph Markey.

They will be dancing classical ballet, tap and contemporary pieces from a range of choreographers, including Gregory Dolbashian, artistic director for the Dash Ensemble, Boston Ballet Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo, New York City Ballet Resident Choreographer Justin Peck, and Christopher Wheeldon, an international choreographer.

New to the lineup are choreographers Jonathan Royce Windham and Remi Wortmyer, artistic director of Ballet Met.

“I try to make the program as interesting, musically or graphically, with different costumes, different energies within each piece, so it gives it a full program,” Sebastian said. “You’re taken on this journey for an hour on a beautiful property.”

The visionary first saw his future stage in 2019, while staying on the property during the inaugural season of HDP. The platform was not sprung, Pat Sebastian had pointed out. There were no bathrooms, no generator and no dressing rooms.

She said it was impossible. Her son said it was perfect.

“It’s our fifth season there,” Pat Sebastian said. “Every time I say something’s not possible, I don’t think he hears me.”

“She does try to bring me back to Earth often,” he said.

In the intervening years as HDP’s producer, Pat Sebastian has learned to trust her son’s vision. And she keeps him, the artistic director, grounded, within reason.

“We’d probably be business partners if we weren’t related,” Pat Sebastian said.

“Maybe,” her son deadpanned.

“I think what I’m saying is, we were sort of put together,” she continued. “But I think if I wasn’t related to him, and I was going to produce his show, and he was going to be the artistic director, we’d work together because we have a balance.”

Together, every summer, they take their HDP company dancers to some of their favorite places, like East Hampton’s Main Beach — “because that was the beach we pretty much lived in because it was so kid friendly,” she said — and Il Capuccino in Sag Harbor, for their legendary garlic knots.

“A lot of that, for them, it’s their first time. They’ve never been. They’ve only heard stories,” Sebastian said of the dancers’ experience with the East End. “And so I try to make it as magical as possible for all of them.”

Just like it was, and still is, for him.

The Hamptons Dance Project VII, in partnership with LTV Studios, will stage at Fireplace Lodge in the East Hampton hamlet of Springs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 8, 9, and 10, at 6 p.m. at Fireplace Lodge in East Hampton. Tickets start at $150. For more information, visit hamptonsdanceproject.org or ltveh.org.