Dance
The best dance performances and dance events in NYC
Tap-dance star Michelle Dorrance tells us what makes her click
The innovative dancer-choreographer taps into the power of blues music in The Blues Project
The eight best dance studios in NYC
Get active (and avoid overcrowded gyms) by heading to these dance studios in NYC
The best hip-hop dance classes in NYC
Transform into a backup dancer at these hip-hop dance classes in NYC. Because learning how to twerk takes work.
The 15 best dance movies of all time
You don’t need to leave your couch to kick up your heels, check out our list of the best dance movies
Critics’ picks: Dance
New York City Ballet Fall 2016
The company's fall season includes 14 works by cofounder George Balanchine, including the full-length Jewels and two programs of shorter pieces. Also on the schedule are a collection of dances by Jerome Robbins (including Glass Pieces) and world premieres of ballets by Lauren Lovette, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Justin Peck and Peter Walker.
Anne Nguyen
Breakdance expert Anne Nguyen makes her U.S. debut as part of the French Instutute Alliance Française's Crossing the Line Festival, with two works: Graphic Cyphers, a group street dance presented free in the Bronx (Sept 23) and in Times Square (Sept 25); and Autarcie (....): a search for self-sufficiency (Sept 29–Oct 1), in which four female dancers in jump suits performs a warrior dance.
Bruno Isaković: Denuded
Building on earlier Queer New York International Arts Festival performances of his Denuded—by a solo dancer and then by a pair—Isaković now expands the piece to encompass nine performers from the U.S. and Croatia. As the title implies, his focus is on the intimate details of human bodies. (The performance on September 28 is of the solo version.)
Pandaemonium
Three demons of innovation collaborate for the first time: choreographer-dancer Nichole Canuso, director Lars Jan and theater artist Geoff Sobelle (whose The Object Lesson was a marvel at BAM in 2014). Their piece takes a postmodern look at connection and isolation in the digital age.
Dance Now Festival
Dance Now's 21st season offers a massive festival of short works by 40 dance makers of every stripe, all challenged to create five-minute pieces for the teeny stage at Joe's Pub. The best of the fest (chosen by the producers) return for a special encore performance on Thu 29, including Boomerang, Jane Comfort and Company and Raja Feather Kelly / the feath3r theory.
DUMBO Dance Festival 2016
The 16th Annual DUMBO Dance Festival crams 325 artists into its hectic programming, which runs the gamut from emerging artists to full-fledged dance stars. 70 dance troupes perform, including host group White Wave Young Soon Kim Dance Company and local heroes Buglisi Dance Theatre. Aside from the opening gala on Thu 29, the performances are free (but reservations are suggested).
Top dance stories
Twyla Tharp tells us about her 50th Anniversary Tour
The superstar choreographers who make the leap into the pop culture stratosphere can be counted on a hand and a half. In that way, Twyla Tharp is a throwback: She's our Jerome Robbins (famous for her Broadway razzle-dazzle like Movin' Out); she's our Agnes de Mille (taking serious dance to the masses in film after film); she's our Martha Graham (an iconic revolutionary who suffers no fools). But after having choreographed nearly 150 works, winning a Tony, a Kennedy Center Honor and 19 honorary doctorates, she's not resting on her laurels. In fact, she’s on fire—for her 50th Anniversary Tour, the 74-year-old Tharp has built another pair of works that ask her customary questions about the interrelatedness of dance forms: Preludes and Fugues (set to Bach) and Yowzie (set to jazz titans like Fats Waller). The “Tharpian” is a melting-pot style, characterized by precision and vaudevillian showmanship—the liquid hips from jazz seducing the elegant lines of ballet. How will the mix work this time? The only thing you'll know to expect: The dances will be ebullient, contagious, athletic. Tharp herself speaks with a wry growl. She makes you back up if you give her a compliment—“Let's hear that again”—and she has a wonderfully tart way of making you feel like an unproductive snoozer. Tharp still works out for two hours every morning; she doesn't really understand why you don't too. She spoke with us from Chicago, from the tour. What inspired the two shows that make up this 50th Annive
Exclusive: Watch a behind-the-scenes video from Broadway's An American in Paris
The most exciting new offering for dance fans has been An American in Paris
Ralph Lemon reflects on his multiplatform work Scaffold Room
There’s something infinitely puckish about Ralph Lemon. Even as the visual artist and choreographer is discussing his challenging work Scaffold Room, which plunges into a whole host of erotic, transgressive and radical aesthetics, he’s smiling. Beaming even. “Look closer!” he urges with a delighted chuckle, and you find yourself nose-to-nose with a mysterious pornographic postcard or approaching a doghouse that seems to have a tiny glowing giraffe living inside.Despite his stature as a major modern choreographer (most recently in the elegiac How Can You Stay In the House and Not Go Anywhere), Lemon slips free of the title for Scaffold Room. Here he is simultaneously movement maker, fine-artist, animating spirit, director, lecturer, documentarian and writer. In similarly sprawling fashion, Room has seemingly taken over the entirety of the Kitchen. Up staircases and behind columns, there are photographs, hidden paintings, installations, votives—look for the African ancestor idols that are dressed like Beyoncé and Jay Z—video and live performance. At certain hours, you might even stumble across a certain Judson Dance titan reading aloud from an S&M classic. (“She said, ‘You choose what I read, Ralph!’ So I chose!” Lemon laughs.)In the conventional performance space on the ground floor, Lemon has constructed the Scaffold Room itself, a movable platform where Okwui Okpokwasili and April Matthis perform a kind of “solo piece for two” about the performance of black womanhood (shows
Dance in pictures
Take a look at Jaamil Olawale Kosoko's daring new performance #negrophobia
The Detroit native and performance art explorer makes a poetic foray into identity and erotic anxiety
Let your heart leap at these images of Batsheva's Young Ensemble in Decadance
Ohad Naharin's legendary company sends in an impressive team with a work that reveals the joy of generational change
See photos from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's latest image-rich work
Take a look as the Taiwanese company visits BAM with the video-saturated Rice, which grafts martial arts into classical and modern dance
Check out pictures of the Evening of Colombian Dance in Battery Park
The Battery Dance Festival took viewers on a dance-filled vacation to South America, all without leaving New York harbor
Try to keep from dancing while looking at DanceBrazil’s 2015 season
The 30-year-old company returns to the Joyce Theater for a program about brotherhood
Stunning sunset images from the Battery Dance Festival
Five companies danced the night away in front of the Statue of Liberty