At a moment of instability in culture and the wider world, dance artists seem to be seeking comfort in the familiar. Even premieres can feel tethered to the past, with reimaginings and re-creations of time-honored works scattered across the fall calendar. Many presenters are betting on established names; the 85- year-old postmodern dignitary Lucinda Childs might be the darling of the season.
Another programming motif offers a different kind of relief: the dance party, where the line between performer and audience blurs or disappears altogether. There’s a lot of comfort to be found in dance-floor communion.
September
TRAJAL HARRELL Runways tend to recur in this theatrical choreographer’s work. The American premiere of “Monkey off My Back or The Cat’s Meow” will feature Harrell emceeing as 17 dancers parade down a 150-foot catwalk in the drill hall of the Park Avenue Armory — an epic setting for the piece’s explorations of fashion and politics. (Sept. 9-20)
92NY HARKNESS DANCE CENTER The center is dedicating a full year of programming to works curated and choreographed by women, beginning with a swing dance party led by the marvelous LaTasha Barnes (Sept. 13) and continuing with world premieres by Yue Yin (Oct. 17-18) and Hélène Simoneau (Nov. 14-15).
WORKS & PROCESS The Guggenheim’s acclaimed series once again offers peeks inside the creative processes of choreographers — Jamar Roberts (Sept. 14) and Ayodele Casel (Sept. 21) are among the featured artists. But the varied slate also includes world premieres by Emily Coates (Nov. 23) and Princess Lockerooo (Dec. 12); a “food opera” with culinary, musical and dance components, the last created by the ballet star Daniil Simkin (Nov. 13-17); and social dance parties in Manhattan West Plaza near Hudson Yards (Wednesdays in September).
FALL FOR DANCE Programming for this popular festival can be a mixed bag, but the element of surprise is part of the charm — as are the $30 tickets. The docket this year includes a premiere by the rising choreographer Roderick George; Gibney Company in Lucinda Childs’s bracingly astringent “Three Dances (for Prepared Piano) John Cage”; and some international ballet royalty: Hannah O’Neill and Hugo Marchand of the Paris Opera Ballet, and Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi of Dutch National Ballet. (Sept. 16-27, New York City Center)
THE JOYCE THEATER Anchoring the Joyce’s season is a celebration of the choreographer Gerald Arpino (1923-2008), with dancers from multiple companies performing his signature ballet-meets-pop-culture works (Sept. 30-Oct. 12). Other programs of note include the electrifying Native American group Indigenous Enterprise (Sept. 16-21); the New York City debut of “American Street Dancer” by the hip-hop maestro Rennie Harris; and “Shadow Cities,” a collaboration between the street and social dance virtuosos of Ephrat Asherie Dance and the dazzling Latin jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill (Dec. 3-7).
NEW YORK CITY BALLET At its annual fall fashion gala, the company will premiere a ballet by the Ailey alumnus Jamar Roberts costumed by the designer Iris van Herpen — two artists whose innovations are undergirded by beautiful craftsmanship. Other programs include plenty of works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins — City Ballet’s bread and butter — plus the company premiere of Justin Peck’s ebullient “Heatscape.” (Sept. 16-Oct. 12, David H. Koch Theater)
ABRONS ARTS CENTER The choreographer Emily Johnson and the scholar Kai Recollet continue their series honoring Indigenous knowledge, “Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter,” at the Abrons amphitheater, with guest artists performing around a ceremonial fire (Sept. 18, Oct. 2, Nov. 6). In the center’s black box theater, the choreographer Kat Sotelo premieres “A Devotion to Service,” a consideration of eroticism and power set in mobile peep show booths (Sept. 26-27).
NYU SKIRBALL CENTER Skirball’s fall dance lineup has two “what if?” works by artists who wear their deep intelligence lightly. Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener’s “Open Machine,” in its premiere, imagines an A.I. programmed by experimental dance (Sept. 19-20); Jack Ferver’s darkly funny “My Town” remakes Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” from a queer perspective (Nov. 21-22).
JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS As political winds continue to buffet the Kennedy Center, its dance season soldiers on, including a National Dance Day celebration (Sept. 20), the Stuttgart Ballet in “Onegin” (Oct. 8-12), and a mixed bill by the Los Angeles-based Bodytraffic (Oct. 29-30).
CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL Just a few highlights from L’Alliance’s dance-rich annual festival: Noé Soulier’s “Movement on movement,” inspired by the ballet revolutionary William Forsythe’s improvisation technique (Sept. 24-25, L’Alliance Skyroom); the premiere of Kimberly Bartosik’s “bLUr,” in which five dancers navigate extremes both brutal and tender (Oct. 2-4, New York Live Arts); the U.S. debut of Wanjiru Kamuyu’s “Fragmented Shadows,” exploring how memories imprint in the body (Oct. 15-17, New York Live Arts); and Will Rawls’s “[siccer],” which considers the media’s distortion of Black bodies and vernacular (Nov. 20-22, Performance Space New York).
A.I.M BY KYLE ABRAHAM Abraham’s thoughtful, compassionate works are in high demand at dance companies around the world, but the pieces he makes for his own troupe have a special intimacy. A.I.M celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall with a program that features Abraham’s sculptural “2×4,” set to a score for two saxophones by Shelley Washington. (Sept. 25-27, Jazz at Lincoln Center)
PAGEANT The artist-run space stays true to its experimental spirit with a season of genre-defying performances, including Alexa West’s “Jawbreaker,” a rumination on exhaustion (Sept. 25-27); and Evan Ray Suzuki’s “Plot Hole,” a Butoh-inspired work of dream logic (Nov. 6-7).
POWERHOUSE: INTERNATIONAL A brand-new festival? In this economy? Yes, at Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Arts. Dance programming during the three-month series includes Mette Ingvartsen’s “Skatepark,” exploring the choreography and community of skateboarding (Sept. 25-27); Hofesh Shechter Company’s epic “Theater of Dreams” (Nov. 13-15); and a dance-floor celebration, “The Imagining,” conceived by Amari Marshall, a dance captain for Beyoncé (Dec. 13).
October
DANSPACE PROJECT The premieres at Danspace Project this season consider expansive, universal themes: mourning, in Elliot Reed’s “Profanity Only Upsets the Living” (Oct. 2-4); love, in Symara Sarai’s new solo (Oct. 16-18) and Yvonne Meier’s “Strega Nona” (Nov. 20-22); and death and end times, in a shared evening by Dominica Greene and Malcolm-x Betts (Dec. 11-13).
MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY In the 1980s, Leonard Bernstein composed a piece of music for Graham — but she never used it. Now the choreographer Hope Boykin picks up the baton, premiering a new work for the Graham Company set to an expanded version of that score as well as an arrangement of excerpts from Bernstein’s “Mass.” (Oct. 4, Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles)
BAM NEXT WAVE 2025 Speaking of Martha: BAM’s Next Wave festival features “Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview,” a re-creation of a famous 92NY conversation between Graham and the critic Walter Terry, with the brilliant performer Richard Move channeling Graham and the actress and playwright Lisa Kron playing Terry (Oct. 28-Nov. 1). Other festival offerings include Nora Chipaumire’s immersive “Dambudzo” (Oct. 8-9); Eiko Otake and Wen Hui’s elegiac “What Is War” (Oct. 21-25); and Leslie Cuyjet’s layered solo “For All Your Life” (Dec. 3-7).
EUROPEAN BALLET AT CITY CENTER The Paris Opera Ballet and Dutch National Ballet — both infrequent visitors to New York City — bring remarkably contemporary programs to City Center this fall, with the Paris company performing Hofesh Shechter’s athletic, Chanel-costumed “Red Carpet” (Oct. 9-12) and the Dutch troupe dancing two mixed bills with works by Hans van Manen, Mthuthuzeli November and Alexei Ratmansky (Nov. 20-22).
AMERICAN BALLET THEATER The headlining event of the company’s fall Lincoln Center run is a celebration of the trailblazing megastar Misty Copeland, who returns to the stage after a five-year hiatus to give audiences a proper goodbye (Oct. 22). The season also includes the premiere of “Have We Met?!” by the rising Brazilian choreographer Juliano Nunes; a program of works by Twyla Tharp, including “Push Comes to Shove”; and the return of Natalia Makarova’s staging of “The Kingdom of the Shades.” (Oct. 15-Nov. 1, David H. Koch Theater)
BARYSHNIKOV ARTS Multiple dance premieres stud the center’s fall lineup. Keerati Jinakunwiphat’s “Of Dishes and Dreams” is inspired by a childhood spent in her family’s Thai restaurant (Oct. 16-18), and longtime Baryshnikov collaborators Benjamin Millepied and Aszure Barton present a shared program of new dances (Oct. 27, 29-30).
TAMAR ROGOFF The choreographer and filmmaker’s new multimedia work, “Drop Dead … Gorgeous,” uses a fake game show — in which participants compete for a chance to win their dream body — to explore our cultural obsession with physical beauty. (Oct. 17-Nov. 2, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club)
NEW YORK LIVE ARTS Vintage treasures highlight the Live Arts fall season: Wally Cardona and Molly Lieber reconstruct a 1975 duet originally performed by the downtown dance luminaries David Gordon and Valda Setterfield (Oct. 22-25, 29-30, Nov. 1); and Tere O’Connor presents a new work but also revisits his first dance, from 1984, “Construct-a-Guy.” (Dec. 3-6, 10-13)
L.A. DANCE PROJECT This fall at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, all three parts of “Gems” — the L.A. Dance Project director Benjamin Millepied’s contemporary answer to Balanchine’s ballet trilogy “Jewels” — will be performed together for the first time in the United States. (Oct. 23-25)
NETTA YERUSHALMY This canny experimental choreographer presents the premiere of “Nothing Personal, Just Everything” — a meditation on midlife — at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens. (Oct. 30-Nov. 1)
November
PERFORMA BIENNIAL 2025 There are several ways to engage with dance at this edition of the biennial. Ayoung Kim, from Seoul, will debut a show inspired by manga and martial arts (Nov. 13-15), and the dance artists Moriah Evans and Isabel Lewis will each offer a series of choreographic scores to be explored through workshops and other interactive events (Nov. 1-23).
PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY The troupe now has two resident choreographers, and will premiere dances by both during its three-week run at Lincoln Center. Robert Battle’s new piece will be set to a musical collage featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Wycliffe Gordon and Mahalia Jackson. Lauren Lovette will tackle John Adams’s “Fearful Symmetries,” a familiar score for her: She danced in Peter Martins’s choreographic interpretation of the work when she was a member of New York City Ballet. (Nov. 4-23, David H. Koch Theater)
CHAIROIPLIN This Tokyo-based contemporary dance company premieres “The Seven Bridges,” a playful dance-theater work intended for both children and adults, based on a fanciful short story by Yukio Mishima. (Nov. 15-16, Japan Society)
DANCE THEATER OF HARLEM For the first time in more than two decades, the company will remount its 1982 smash-hit “Firebird,” which transports the fairy tale from Russia to a tropical jungle through John Taras’ vibrant choreography and Geoffrey Holder’s fantastical sets and costumes. (Nov. 15-16, Detroit Opera)
LUCINDA CHILDS The innovative choreographer’s 1964 “Street Dance” — in which viewers look out from upper-story windows at the street below, where dancers point out architectural details and traffic signs — made rule-breaking both elegant and fun. Childs, now 85, will perform in a re-enactment of the piece, staged in the choreographer Douglas Dunn’s studio. (Nov. 15-17; ticketing information will be available on Sept. 8)
LONDON CITY BALLET The company has made a point of reviving rarely seen works, and this fall it resurrects Jerome Robbins’s Aaron Copland ballet “Quiet City” (1986) — staged so infrequently that only two casts have ever performed it. (Nov. 19-22, Linbury Theater at the Royal Opera House, London)
December
ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER Ailey enters a new era with the artistic director Alicia Graf Mack, and its five-week New York City Center season emphasizes the new, too. Making their first works for the company are the contemporary ballet choreographer Matthew Neenan, and Maija Garcia, whose “Jazz Island” will spin a Caribbean folk tale. Other premieres come from Ailey family: The former resident choreographer Jamar Roberts will reimagine Alvin Ailey’s 1961 solo “Hermit Songs,” and current company dancers Samantha Figgins and Chalvar Monteiro have collaborated with the venerated founder of Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, on “The Holy Blues.” (Dec. 3-Jan. 4)
BROOKLYN BALLET The charming “Brooklyn Nutcracker,” which sets the familiar holiday story in both Victorian-era and modern-day Brooklyn neighborhoods, incorporates a rich array of dance styles that reflect the borough’s cultural mosaic. (Dec. 6-7, 13-14, The Theater at City Tech)
NEW DANCES: EDITION 2025 In this annual Juilliard School showcase, each class of dancers performs a premiere by a different choreographer: When the chemistry is right, the experiment enlightens both students and audiences. There are new dances by the former New York City Ballet dancer Gianna Reisen, artists from Studio Wayne McGregor, and the Juilliard alums Takehiro Ueyama and My’Kal Stromile. (Dec. 10-14, Peter Jay Sharp Theater)
The post This Fall, Dance Parties, Reimaginings and Farewell Misty Copeland appeared first on New York Times.
