New York City Center will welcome an array of dance companies from around the world for its 2025-26 season, the theater announced on Tuesday.
The season opens with the center’s 22nd Fall for Dance Festival (Sept. 16-27), with its most international lineup since the pandemic.
“It was absolutely an intentional choice on our part,” said Michael S. Rosenberg, City Center’s president and chief executive. “This feels like a very important moment to have global perspectives on our stage in New York City because of all that’s happening in the world.”
The festival includes the Social Tango Project from Argentina; the Stuttgart Ballet from Germany; San Francisco Ballet; and a restaging of Jerome Robbins’s “Afternoon of Faun” starring the Paris Opera Ballet étoiles Hannah O’Neill and Hugo Marchand. Festival tickets are $20 (plus fees).
“There’s really no point in bringing the world’s best to our stage if people can’t afford to be in the audience,” Rosenberg said.
Beyond Fall for Dance, City Center also presents Paris Opera Ballet (Oct. 9-12), in its first engagement in New York since 2012. The company will perform the New York premiere of Hofesh Shechter’s “Red Carpet,” featuring costumes created in partnership with Chanel.
The New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck returns to the theater with “Turn It Out With Tiler Peck & Friends” (Oct. 16-19). The program includes William Forsythe’s “The Barre Project, Blake Works II,” set to music by James Blake; Peck’s “Thousandth Orange,” set to live music by the Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw; and Alonzo King’s pas de deux “Swift Arrow,” with music by Jason Moran. The program closes with the 2022 City Center commission “Time Spell,” a collaboration of Peck, Michelle Dorrance and Jillian Meyers.
Dutch National Ballet (Nov. 20-22) follows with two programs featuring the former Bolshoi star Olga Smirnova and dances by Ted Brandsen, Wubkje Kuindersma, Robbins and a new work by Alexei Ratmansky, which is to have its premiere at the Holland Festival in June.
Presented by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, Lyon Opera Ballet (Feb. 19-21) returns with a double bill of works: Merce Cunningham’s 1999 “Biped” and the U.S. premiere of Christos Papadopoulos’s 2023 “Mycelium,” set to electronic music by Coti K.
Martha Graham Dance Company’s centennial celebration (April 9-12) will bring three Graham classics — “Night Journey,” “Chronicle” and “Appalachian Spring,” each with stage designs by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and scores played by the Mannes Orchestra — along with newer works by Jamar Roberts and Baye & Asa.
Other highlights include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s five-week holiday season (Dec. 3-Jan. 4); the 25th Flamenco Festival (Feb. 26-March 8); Dance Theater of Harlem, which will perform “Firebird,” a reimagining of the classic Russian folk tale in a lush Caribbean setting (April 16-19); and Ballet Hispánico’s “Mujeres: Women in Motion,” the company’s second program dedicated to female choreographers (April 23-26).
Musical theater programming, including the annual gala presentation and 2026 Encores! series, will be announced at a later date.
“What we’re doing is presenting New Yorkers with opportunities for discovery,” Stanford Makishi, City Center’s artistic director, said about the visiting dance companies.
“Even though their work is performed all over the world,” he said, “it’s not done so much here.”
Rachel Sherman reports on culture and the arts for The Times.
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