Andrea Macko is reporting for Porcupine Soup the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation announced October 7, a gift of $500,000 to the Stephen Petronio Company for the preservation of a 77-acre parcel in Round Top. The land, surrounding the Petronio Residency Center on Crows Nest Road, next door to the Catskill Preserve, will be designated a forever wild open space. It will be named the Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top, Greene County. “The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's grant to Stephen Petronio Company is nothing short of transformational for us as an organization,” said Stephen Petronio. A modern dance choreographer, Petronio in 2017, established the Petronio Residency Center on 172 acres that feature a 6,500-square-foot house and 2,500-square-foot state-of-the-art dance studio, organic garden and hiking trails. The mission of the center is to provide artists with a place to research and create new work away from their day-to-day responsibilities in close proximity to nature, and to establish a local dance education program that brings the power of movement to local youth. In addition to the Duke foundation, the Petronio company also received support from The Howard Gilman Foundation. Read the full story at porcupinesoup [dot] com.