If January in the Northeast is always colder and gloomier than we can bear to remember—hope springing eternal, and all that—how much worse this murderous year, with February promising only to solidify the shock and chill. Big thanks, then, to PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance for The Dark, an unabashed celebration of winter in the snowy heart of it, upstate. The inaugural week-long festival is the brainchild of PS21’s new director, Vallejo Gantner, whom New Yorkers may remember for his smart, irreverent, fearless 12-year run at PS122 in the East Village, before the storied theater took an interminable break to improve its property and demolish its programming and audience. Gantner has adjusted to his new woodsy locale and these less ironical times with more cosmic, unclassifiable offerings, such as Raven Chacon’s voiceless mass; Sophia Brous and Gundega Laiviņa’s sung and told lullabies gathered from Hudson Valley residents; and choreographer-dancer Okwui Okpokwasili and director-designer Peter Born’s “durational” work, my tongue is a blade, about what evolves and endures between four players over three hours. —Apollinaire Scherr