The dance world is in a festive mood this fall: It seems like everyone has a big anniversary to celebrate. All that attention on the past may explain why the programming sometimes tilts conservative, especially in ballet, where evening-length storytelling remains de rigueur. But the stories are getting more ambitious, the voices telling them more varied. And there are still plenty of artists pushing in the opposite direction. Some of the season’s most exciting dances can’t even be contained by theater walls, finding their stages in parks, museums, historic buildings, farm fields. (Locations are in Manhattan unless otherwise specified; dates are subject to change.)
September
YANIRA CASTRO / A CANARY TORSI Started in July, “Exorcism = Liberation,” a sweeping public art and performance project by Castro and a team of collaborators, calling for collective change, continues with immersive, participatory events at multiple sites in New York, Illinois and Massachusetts. (Through Nov. 1; various locations)
THE JOYCE THEATER The dozen programs on offer at the Joyce from September to December feature an abundance both of dance styles and premieres. London City Ballet brings four U.S. debuts to the Joyce as part of its first international tour in more than 30 years (Sept. 17-22). A new work by Kayla Farrish reimagining two of José Limón’s lost dances highlights Limón Dance Company’s Joyce season (Nov. 5-10). Complexions Contemporary Ballet’s 30th birthday celebrations include a retrospective for Dwight Rhoden, an artistic director of the company, whose sinewy, sinuous choreography has become its hallmark (Nov. 19-Dec. 1). And the drag ensemble Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo celebrates 50 years of lovingly skewering ballet: Durante Verzola’s “Symphony,” in its New York debut, makes a comedic meal of George Balanchine’s delectable “Symphony in C” (Dec. 17-Jan. 5).
NEW YORK CITY BALLET On the heels of its 75th birthday festivities, the company presents another anniversary-focused season, with programs commemorating 90 years of its affiliated School of American Ballet, 50 years of George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova’s sunny “Coppélia,” and 10 years of Justin Peck’s tenure as resident choreographer. The annual fall fashion gala (Oct. 9) will include a world premiere by Caili Quan, costumed by designer Gilles Mendel. (Sept. 17-Oct. 13, David H. Koch Theater)
FALL FOR DANCE “Eclectic” remains the word, and $20 (plus fees), the ticket price, for this long-running festival. But its five sampler-style programs are notably ballet-forward this year, with the National Ballet of Ukraine in Alexei Ratmansky’s poignant “Wartime Elegy,” Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet in a premiere by Cameron Fraser-Monroe, and the American Ballet Theater stars Skylar Brandt and Herman Cornejo in Cornejo’s new production of “The Specter of the Rose.” (Sept. 18-29, New York City Center)
ABRONS ARTS CENTER Two tonally opposite dance-theater works come to Abrons this fall: Malik Nashad Sharpe’s “Marikiscrycrycry: Goner,” a solo probing the depths of horror and alienation (Sept. 19-22), and Nélida Tirado’s “Dime Quién Soy (Tell Me Who I Am),” a celebratory mixture of flamenco, bomba y plena and salsa (Dec. 13-22).
PAGEANT This young and category-eluding performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, will mount a smorgasbord of a fall season, with shows by Molly Soda (Sept. 19-20), Anna Thérèse Witenberg (Sept. 26-27), Sebas Alarcon (Oct. 10-11), Vita Taurke (Oct. 24-25) and Cayleen del Rosario (Nov. 7-8), capped by a showing of works-in-progress by artists selected via lottery (Nov. 21-22).
2024 CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL It’s an especially good dance year for the French Institute Alliance Française’s annual festival. Among its eight dance performances are a retrospective for the choreographer Jérôme Bel (Sept. 27-28, Florence Gould Theater), a site-specific dance by Lenio Kaklea on Governors Island (Oct. 5), and the U.S. premiere of the French transplant DD Dorvillier’s “Dance is the archaeologist, or an idol in the bone.” (Oct. 17-19, the Chocolate Factory).
92NY HARKNESS DANCE CENTER Last season, 92NY celebrated 150 years; this year, the organization’s Harkness Dance Center turns 90. Its anniversary season includes the Batsheva Ensemble from Israel (Sept. 27-29), the women-led company Dual Rivet (Oct. 18-19), the in-demand choreographer Omar Román De Jesús’ troupe Boca Tuya (Nov. 14-15), and the acclaimed company Urban Bush Women — which is celebrating its own 40th anniversary festivities (Dec. 6-7).
KAATSBAAN FALL FESTIVAL The Hudson Valley cultural park’s annual festival dedicates its final two weekends to dance: first, a program of new dance works developed during residencies at Kaatsbaan (Sept. 28-29), and then the choreographer Wayne McGregor’s “Autobiography (v100 and v101),” which incorporates an algorithm based on his DNA (Oct. 5-6).
WORKS & PROCESS This lauded series at the Guggenheim Museum offers behind-the-scenes peeks at a range of dance projects — from Baye & Asa’s newly expanded “Cortege 2023” for the Martha Graham Dance Company, inspired by Graham’s “Cortege of Eagles” (Sept. 29), to a new work by the vibrant tap dance and music company Music From the Sole (Sept. 30) — as well as dance parties in the museum’s rotunda (Sept. 23, Nov. 18) and dance battles in the Manhattan West Event Plaza across town (Wednesdays in September).
October
RALPH LEMON Lemon’s irrepressibly multidisciplinary works tend to require multiple descriptors: lecture/musical, event/performance. This fall the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will premiere his installation “Rant redux,” with sound by artist Kevin Beasley (Oct. 3-13), in tandem with a new live performance, “Tell it anyway” (Oct. 4-5) — both genre-defying maelstroms of fury and grace. The next month, the two works will come to MoMA’s PS1 in New York as part of the major Lemon exhibition “Ceremonies Out of the Air” (opening Nov. 14).
DANCES FOR A VARIABLE POPULATION The multigenerational troupe will offer three free performances of “Revival 8: Then and Now,” a series in which works by renowned choreographers — Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor — are reinterpreted by alumni of their companies. (Oct. 5, Yolanda Garcia Park; Oct. 18, Washington Square Park; Nov. 16, Ailey Citigroup Theater)
JONATHAN GONZÁLEZ For multiple hours on four consecutive weekends, the six Black performers of González’s “Spectral Dances” will haunt the traditionally members-only halls of the Academy of Arts and Letters in Washington Heights — a consideration of the space and its history, real and imagined. (Oct. 5-27)
DANSPACE PROJECT Danspace celebrates its 50th anniversary this fall by foregrounding not the old but the new, with premieres by Niall Jones (Oct. 10-12), Ayano Elson and Wendell Gray II (Nov. 21-23) and Jade Manns and Glenn Potter-Takata (Dec. 12-14). On Nov. 2, the organization will look both backward and forward, screening short videos by Danspace luminaries that respond to the prompt, “The future is…”
BLACK LABEL MOVEMENT The choreographer Carl Flink examines the ethical and physical consequences of war in his new work “Battleground,” performed by the dancers of Black Label Movement in a 30-by-25-foot dirt pit on a farm outside of Durham, N.C. (Oct. 11-13)
AMERICAN BALLET THEATER Ballet Theater has mounted a few ambitious literary adaptations recently, but the choreographer Helen Pickett is taking on a particularly daunting tome: “Crime and Punishment.” Her interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s novel headlines the company’s fall season, which also features premieres by Kyle Abraham and Gemma Bond. (Oct. 16-Nov. 3, David H. Koch Theater)
BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER The fall season offers several premieres by a remarkable collection of collaborators. “Woolgathering,” a spoken-word opera with music by Oliver Ray and choreography by John Heginbotham, is based on Patti Smith’s book — and features Smith among its performers (Oct. 21, 23-24). The new multidisciplinary group Prisma, helmed by the choreographer and photographer Quinn Wharton, presents a work exploring its artists’ personal mythologies (Nov. 14-16).
CATHY WEIS PROJECTS For a decade, Weis has hosted “Sundays on Broadway” salons — featuring works-in-process and other experiments from an impressive roster of artists — in her intimate SoHo loft. Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay are two of the featured artists in the fall’s five programs. (Oct. 27, Nov. 10, Nov. 17, Dec. 1, Dec. 8)
2024 BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL Anchoring the festival is Bill T. Jones’s “Still/Here” (Oct. 30-Nov. 2), a deeply personal meditation on mortality and survival in response to the AIDS epidemic, which continues to challenge audiences (and critics) 30 years after its premiere. Next Wave will also feature the U.S. premiere of the Canadian choreographer Dana Gingras’s psychedelic “Frontera,” accompanied live by the experimental rock band Fly Pan Am (Nov 8-9).
November
OONA DOHERTY Irish history, mythology and trauma loom large in much of this choreographer’s work. But “Specky Clark,” premiering at the Pavillion Noir in Aix en Provence, France, explores Doherty’s personal history: Its surrealist dance-theater images are inspired by her great-grandfather’s working-class life in Belfast. (Nov. 22-23)
‘INK’ Dancers sometimes talk about being choreographers’ paintbrushes, but in “Ink,” a collaboration between the dance artist Huang Yi and the audiovisual artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, that image is startlingly apt: Kurokawa’s projections turn the performers’ movements into a flow of brushstrokes, inspired by the calligraphy of Tong Yang-Tze. (Nov. 2-3, at the Rose Theater)
PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY The company’s resident choreographer Lauren Lovette will be in the spotlight during its fall run at Lincoln Center, which features not one but two Lovette premieres plus the return of her 2023 piece “Echo.” The troupe will also begin its two-year anniversary tribute to Taylor’s “Esplanade,” the seminal work that he began creating 50 years ago. And Robert Battle — until last year, the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater — will create a new work for the company’s gala, in tribute to the renowned Taylor dancer and educator Carolyn Adams. (Nov. 5-24, David H. Koch Theater)
SMITA SEN A former ballet dancer, Sen now calls herself an interaction designer. Her first museum exhibition, “Embodied,” will combine performance and film with body art and 3D-printed sculptures. (Nov. 6-Apr. 6, 2025, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, Fla.)
THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY Highlights of the experimental Long Island City-based organization’s fall lineup include the premiere of Levi Gonzalez’s “Hoary” (Nov. 13-16) and Tess Dworman’s wry, mordant “Everything Must Go” (Dec. 18-21).
‘NUTCRACKER’ TRADITIONS For purists, there are few better options than New York City Ballet’s wondrous “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center (Nov. 29-Jan. 4). But the smallest ballet fans might fare better at New York Theater Ballet’s charming one-hour “Nutcracker,” performed in multiple locations (Nov. 22-23; Dec. 1-2, 15, 21-22).
‘NUTCRACKER’ ALTERNATIVES Prefer your holidays with a twist? Consider tap ensemble Dorrance Dance’s jazzy, joyful “The Nutcracker Suite,” at New York City Center (Nov. 22-24); Brooklyn Ballet’s “The Brooklyn Nutcracker,” with a rich mosaic of dance styles, at the Theater at City Tech (Dec. 12-15); Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut,” a kitschy classic in its own right, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Dec. 12-22); or the Bang Group’s bubbly, batty “Nut/Cracked,” at 92NY’s Harkness Dance Center (Dec. 14 and 19; online Dec. 20-23).
December
KYLE ABRAHAM It’s not surprising that extraordinary dancers seem to follow Abraham wherever he goes: His compassionate choreography allows them to be both humans and superheroes. “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful,” his new full-length work exploring the power of empathy, will feature a large cast of those magnetic performers; Abraham, himself a gorgeous mover, will join them. (Dec. 3-14, Park Avenue Armory)
GIBNEY COMPANY Gibney’s hungry, hyper-capable dancers will tackle a world premiere by Emilie LeRiche, the rising phenom Mthuthuzeli November’s “Vukani,” and William Forsythe’s virtuosic brainteaser “Trio.” (Dec. 10-14, New York Live Arts)
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