Upcoming Summer Dance in New York City
Whether you’re looking to immerse yourself in imaginative new choreographic works as an audience member or do some dancing yourself, here are some exciting events and performances around New York City this summer.
Dance Performances in the Amph at Little Island
Little Island was first envisioned as both a park and an outdoor space for performing artists to explore their voices freely and present work to the public. This summer, its amphitheater facing the Hudson River will showcase new site specific works from postmodern and contemporary choreographers Twyla Tharp and Pam Tanowitz. Performances of Twyla Tharp’s “How Long Blues” will run through most of June. Using live music composed and arranged by T Bone Burnett and David Mansfield, the full length piece continues her previous interest from “Eight Jelly Rolls” and “Nine Sinatra Songs” in working with jazz compositions. According to Tharp in a recent New York Times article, “How Long Blues” is also largely inspired by the life, work, and resiliency of French philosopher Albert Camus.
Twyla Tharp, “How Long Blues”
June 1st – 23rd
Pam Tanowitz, “Day For Night”
July 17th – 21st
“Day For Night” from Tanowitz premieres at Little Island on July 17th and will be performed through the 21st. Utilizing natural sensory elements of the surrounding park, it will “exam[ine] relationships, nostalgia, and memory, stitched to the sounds and landscapes of Little Island,” says the program description.
Lincoln Center's Summer For the City
June 12th – August 10th | more info and full listing of events here
Get ready for Lincoln Center Plaza’s annual transformation into an outdoor dance floor complete with a giant disco ball above the central fountain and free admission to dance events throughout the summer. The festival features a lineup of live musicians and DJs covering a wide variety of musical genres, including swing jazz, disco, salsa, hip hop, R&B, and funk for both social dances and silent discos. There will also be numerous dance performances, as well as workshops for both children and adults led by professional dance companies and schools from all over the city.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball at the Perelman Performing Arts Center
June 13th – July 28th | tickets here
Directors Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles reimagine Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 megamusical (based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot) with club beats and voguing– part of the production’s new choreography by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch.
One common criticism of the original Cats is that it lacks much of an overarching plot aside from the competition among different cats to be chosen for rebirth. Instead, it’s a collection of numbers where cats each introduce themselves and make their case. While this loose structure turns off some audience members who don’t feel the most invested in the storytelling and find the anthropomorphic imagery too unsettling, Cats is really about spectacle– the immersive in-theater experience of performers transforming themselves into cat-like characters with stylized movement. This makes it an especially apt and exciting choice to recontextualize the musical using elements of ballroom culture, where artists similarly compete for community recognition using elaborate fashion and choreography. This version of Cats is set in a ballroom competition at a nightclub where the only “cats” involved are the actors’ performance alter egos.
Queer the Ballet: Dream of a Common Language
June 21st – 23rd | tickets here
Founded by choreographer and former dancer with the New York City Ballet Adriana Pierce, Queer the Ballet aims to express queer experiences through dance and expand choreography beyond the heteronormative partnering and stories that have historically dominated classical ballet. From June 21st to 23rd at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, Queer the Ballet will perform the new full-length ballet “Dream of a Common Language” inspired by the poetry of Adrienne Rich by the same name and detailing the experiences of six queer dancers looking for a common language of community. It is a collaborative effort among multiple choreographers, including Rosie Elliot, Adriana Pierce, Minnie Lane, and Lenai Alexis Wilkerson.
This also comes shortly after the release of Adriana Pierce’s stunning new work “A Place For Us,” a dance film in collaboration with filmmaker Ellie Gravitte and Leigh-Ann Esty that re-envisions the iconic sneaker-ballet opening of West Side Story with an all-female cast of dancers who were in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 film adaptation. It matches the invigorating, hot-wire energy of the scene from West Side Story while replacing the aggression of the gang with a euphoric (and playful) sense of fearlessness through tight bonds.
BAAND Together Dance Festival
July 30th – August 3rd | choose-what-you-pay tickets available here
From July 30th to August 3rd, dancers from Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem will all perform five shows together at the David H. Koch Theater for the annual BAAND Together Dance Festival.
The program features a number of neoclassical, modern, and contemporary dance classics: the intricate and boundlessly energetic Blake Works IV (the barre project) which William Forsythe first created with dancers over video call during the pandemic using the familiar ballet barre as a central choreographic tool; George Balanchine’s intimately emotional and reflective pas de deux Duo Concertant created for his 1972 Stravinsky Festival; the thrillingly dynamic and fast-paced Solo by Hans van Manen split among three dancers; Brady Farrar’s new pas de deux at dusk, Night Falls, which just premiered in April during ABT Studio Company’s performances at the Joyce Theater; and to close out the performance, Sombrerísimo by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, which takes inspiration from René Magritte’s paintings of men in bowler hats.
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